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DIANA, Countess of Belflor The Marquis RICARDO ACT I

OTAVIO, her old steward CELIO,his servant
FABIO, her footman The Count FEDERICO
MARCELA LEONIDa, his servant TEODORO, in evening wear, with an ornamented cloak,
DOROTEA her ladies-in-waiting The Count LUDOVICO and TRISTAN enter, fleeing.
ANARDA CAMILO, his servant
TEODORO: Tristan! quick, run this way!
TEODORO, her secretary ANTONELO
TRISTAN: What a disaster!
TRISTAN, a lackey FURIO lackeys
TEODORO: . She recognize us?
LIRANO
TRISTAN: Probably. Don't know.
(They exit; DIANA, Countess of Belflor, enters in pursuit)
DIANA: Wait, sir! Sir, stay! Remain! Hear what I say!
This is an outrage, sir. Come back! Look, listen!
Hello!! Where are those servants? Hello! No one?
It was no ghost, I know; I wasn't dreaming.
Hello! Are you all asleep?
(FABIO, a servant, enters.)
FABIO: Your ladyship?"
DIANA: I like your coolness, when you see I'm blazing!'
Hurry, you idiot, what else can I call you,
and find out who it was just left this room.
FABIO: This room?
DIANA: Move, man, and answer with your feet!
FABIO: I'll go.
DIANA: See who it was. What villainy!
enters.y
(OTAVIO
OTAVIO: Although I heard you call, so late at night,
I thought, your ladyship, it wasn't you.
DIANA: After the storm, St. Elmo's firel" So calm!
So soon to bed, so late to rise, so slow!
I find men roaming round my house, at this hour,
42 LOPE DE VEGA I.i I.i TI-lE DOG IN TI-lE MANGER 43

and almost in my chamber-such effrontery­ OTAVIO: Quite right; it's wrong to cause you such concern.
and when I'm in despair, this is the way But though it may be foolish, when you're angry,
my trusty servants speed to my assistance! tel mention it, your ill-advised persistence
"Although I heard you call, so late at night, in spurning all your suitors makes them bold
I thought, your ladyship, it wasn't you.:" to think out ways of forcing you to marry.
Quite right, it isn't I, go back to bed. DIANA: Do you know something?
(FABIO enters.) OTAVIO: I know nothing, madam,
except that though, as everybody says,
OTAVIO: My lady....
you're beautiful and yet refuse to marry,
FABIO: Never saw the like; he flew? Count of Belflor's a title many covet."
DIANA: Could you identify....
FABIO: Identify ... ? (FABIO enters.)
DIANA: His cloak; gold, wasn't it?
FABIO: As he ran down.... FABIO: I've found the hat, but nothing could be nastier.
DIANA: Old women, all my servants are!' DIANA: Show me. What's this?
FABIO: ... he threw FABIO: Don't know. That's what he threw.
his hat towards the lamp, and put it out, DIANA: This thing?
then drew his sword and got away. OTAVIO: I've never seen a viler object.
DIANA: You coward!" FABIO: That's it.
FABIO: What could I do? DIANA: You found this?
DIANA: Do? Close with him, and kill him! FABIO: Why would I deceive you?
OTAVIO: ,But if he was a ~ntleman, your....hQnQ!lr OTAVIO: Fine feathers!
could have been compromised. FABIO: Must have been a thief.
DIANA: --A gentleman? OTAVIO: That's obvious.
OTAVIO: Don't any number here in Naples court you, DIANA: I shall go mad!
and try to see you any way they may? FABIO: This was the hat he threw.
Aren't there a thousand nobles mad to marry you? DIANA: And all that plethora of plumes I saw
I'm sure I'm right; you say he was well dressed, is turned to this?
and Fabio saw the hat he threw at the lamp. FABIO: Well, when it hit the lamp,
DIANA: No doubt it was one of my noble suitors they must have caught alight and burned like tow.
who'd bribed some of my servants, they're so loyal. Remember Icarus flew near the sun,
But I'll know who it was. The hat had plumes, his wings were burnt, and he fell in the sea.
and must be on the staircase; go and fetch it. This hat was Icarus, the lamp the sun,
FABIO: You think I'll find it? its feathers flamed, and it fell on the stair.
DIANA: Well, of course, you fool; DIANA: We are not amused. JO What happened here tonight?
he can't have picked it up if he was running. I mean to know.
FABIO: I'll take a light. OTAVIO: But there'll be time.
DIANA: What time?
(FABIO, exits.) OTAVIO: Go back to bed, you can investigate
DIANA: If any of my servants tomorrow.
have been to blame for this, I'll send them packing! DIANA: No. I shall not rest, I swear,
44 LOPE DE VEGA I.i I.i THE DOG IN THE MANGER 45

until I know. Now, summon all the women. Would any of us dare to bring a man
OTAVIO: But what a way to spend the night, my lady! to see you here, would we betray you so?
DIANA: How can I sleep? A man here, in the house! My lady, you don't understand.
OTAVIO: You would be wise to wait, and learn the truth DIANA: Come closer.
in secret. I think, unless you're trying to deceive me,
DIANA: Yes, Otavio, very wise. he came to see not me, but one of you.
Sleep on a secret? Very wise, I'm sure. ANARDA: Your ladyship, your righteous indignation
persuades me in all honesty to tell you
(FABIO, DOROTEA, MARCELA and ANARDA enter.)
the truth, despite my friendship for Marcela.
FABIO: I've brought the ones who matter; all the others She loves a man, I know, and he loves her,
were fast asleep, and wouldn't know, my lady. though who it is....
Only your own attendants were awake. DIANA: Anarda, why concede
ANARDA: The waves are high tonight, the seas are stormy! a major point, and then conceal a minor?
OTAVIO: Should we withdraw? ANARDA: I don't like telling other people's secrets,
DIANA: Yes, leave us, both of you. though women often do; d'you need to put me
FABIO: Cross-questioning? to so much torture? Isn't it enough
OTAVIO: She's cross enough! to know he came for her, not you? Rest easy;
FABIO: With me! it's only talk, and only started lately.
DIANA: Here, Dorotea. DIANA: What shamelessness! What price my reputation
DOROTEA: Yes, your ladyship? as an unmarried woman? By the life
DIANA: Tell me, which gentlemen frequent this street? of my late lord the count, I swear.... 13
DOROTEA: The marquis, and at times the count, my lady. ANARDA: My lady!
DIANA: As you desire my favour," tell me truly.... Let me explain, it isn't some outsider;
DOROTEA: How could I lie? this man she talks to, doesn't come to see her.
DIANA: Whom have you seen them speak with? DIANA: You mean, a servant?
DOROTEA: Although I burned for it,12 I couldn't say ANARDA: Yes.
I've seen them speak with any living soul DIANA: But who?
except yourself, not from this house I mean. ANARDA: Teodoro.
DIANA: They've given you no notes? They've sent no pages? DIANA: My secretary?
DOTOTEA: No, never. ANARDA: Yes. That's all I know.
DIANA: Leave me. DIANA: Stand back, Anarda.
MARCELA: What an inquisition! ANARDA: Please be prudent, madam.
ANARDA: Wicked! DIANA: I'm calm now, since it wasn't me he came for.
DIANA: Anarda! Marcela.
ANARDA: Yes, your ladyship? MARCELA: Madam?
DIANA: Who was the man who left this room? DIANA: Listen.
ANARDA: A man? MARCELA: Now I'm for it.
DIANA: I know your tricks. Who brought him here to see me? DIANA: Is this how you betray my trust, my honour?
Which of you spoke with him? MARCELA: What have they said? You know what store I set by
ANARDA: No one would risk it. the loyalty lowe you.
46 LOPE DE VEGA 'I.i I.ii THE DOG IN THE MANGER 47

DIANA: Loyalty, you? and you pursue your love with more discretion.
MARCELA: Have I offended? When opportunity affords, I'll help you;
DIANA: Is it not to offend me Teodoro's sensible, and has been raised
to admit a man's advances, in my chamber? here in my house, and you, Marcela,
MARCELA: No matter where we are, he's such a silly, kinship apart, have merited my favour.
he trots out saucy phrases by the dozen. MARCELA: I kneel and kiss your feet.
DIANA: A bumper crop, thank Heaven! By the dozen? DIANA: Leave me alone now.
MARCELA: Indoors or out, I mean to say, his thoughts ANARDA: Well?
translate as pretty words. MARCELA: Angry, but it turned to my advantage!
DIANA: Translate? How curious! 14 DOROTEA: She knows your secrets?
What does he say? MARCELA: Yes, but knows they're harmless.
MARCELA: I don't recall. (The three women curtsey to DIANA, and eXit)15
DIANA: You do!
MARCELA:
DIANA (alone): I've often seen Teodoro's handsome face,
One day he'll say: "Your eyes have snared my soul."
often remarked his wit and manly beauty,
The next: "I live for them; my tender longings
and might admire his mind, his charm, his grace,
kept me awake all night." The next he'll beg
were that consistent with my sense of duty.
a single hair to bind them in his thoughts.
Love is the common lot of all on earth;
But why should such frivolities intrigue you?
but I more highly prize my honoured name,
DIANA: They please you well enough.
MARCELA:
I worship my nobility of birth,
They're not unpleasing,
and must regard the very thought with shame.
because I know his virtuous intentions.
Envy, I know too well, must be my fate,
He means to marry me.
DIANA:
engendered by a joy I cannot share;
True, marriage is
with reason I resent my rank and state,
Love's proper aim. You wish me to arrange it?
MARCELA:
and can but vainly wish, in fond despair,
Nothing could make me happier! Oh, my lady,
that he were more, and I not far above him,
your anger proves so mild, your heart so noble,
or I were less, and so could freely love him.
I can't conceal from you that I adore him!
He's quite the cleverest, wisest, tenderest youth
in all this city.
DIANA: As my secretary (TEODORO and TRISTAN enter.)
I know he's clever. TEODORO: I couldn't rest.
MARCELA: That's another matter. TRISTAN: I'm not a bit surprised.
You know the style he uses when you're writing If she finds out, well, that's the end of you!
to noble relatives; I know the way I told you: "Wait till she's asleep"; you wouldn't.
he whispers fond endearments, rather closer. TEODORO: Love never brooks resistance.
DIANA: Marcela, though I promise you shall marry TRISTAN: You're all thrust,
when the time's ripe, I must be seen to act and never on your guard.
in due accordance with my noble rank, TEODORO: Like all good swordsmen."
and cannot countenance your courting here. TRISTAN: You'd realise the danger if you were one.
My anger's known to all; I must sustain it, TEODORO: You think she recognised me?

48 LOPE DE VEGA
TRISTAN: Yes, and no;
she didn't know it was you, but she suspected.
TEODORO: When Fabio chased me down the stairs, I marvel
I didn't kill him.
TRISTAN: Wasn't I the wonder,
throwing my hat, and putting out the lamp?
TEODORO: It dazzled him, and stopped him where he stood.
If he'd gone on, I should have gone for him.
TRISTAN: As I ran down, I told the lamp: "You say
we're strangers"; but it said: "You lie!"
I drew and threw my hat. Am I dishonoured?"
TEODORO: I cannot live.
TRISTAN: You lovers always say
such things as that, before you're hurt at all.
TEODORO: Tristan, what can I do in so much danger?
TRISTAN: Forget Marcela! You know what the countess
is like; if she finds out, you'll have no choice,
you'll have to go.
TEODORO: Forget her? Just like that?
TRISTAN: I'll give you lessons on the Cures for Love.
TEODORO: More of your nonsense?
TRISTAN: No, Art conquers all.
It's easy; listen, this is how it's done.
First, you must be determined to forget,
and not suppose you'll ever love again;
for if you've any hope of loving later
that hope will queer the pitch, and wreck the cure. IS
Why can't a man, d'you think, forget a woman?
He fools himself, thinking he'll think again.
He's got to be determined in his mind,
and not let his imagination wander.
Haven't you seen a clock that's wanting winding?
Its wheels are still; so are the faculties,
the powers of the soul, when hope is wanting.
TEODORO: But doesn't memory then leap into action,
awakening feeling not to lose its prize?
TRISTAN: Yes, memory, as the poet put it, is
the "near'st and dearest enemy" of the mind;"
but there's a crafty way to circumvent it.
TEODORO: What's that?
.~ .... _-..
_------- - .. - .. --- ----­ -----
I.ii I.ii THE DOG IN THE MANGER 49
TRISTAN: Recall her vices, not her virtues.
Wise men forget, remembering women's defects.
Don't picture her in elegant attire,
trim-waisted, raised aloft on high-heeled slippers.r"
That's all just architecture; don't you know
some wit once said that half a woman's beauty
was given her by whoever made her clothes?"
It's as a penitent who's flogged himself
and been dragged off for treatment you must see her,
not prettified by expensive petticoats.
In short, think of her faults as love's true medicine;
for if remembering some disgusting thing
can put you off your food for weeks on end,
recalling, when she comes to mind, her defects
will take your lover's appetite away.
TEODORO: What clumsy cures unlettered quacks come up with!
What rough-and-ready remedies you offer!
I can't conceive of women as you see them;
to me they're pure as crystal, clear as glass.
TRISTAN: As glass, you say? It's true they're frail and flimsy!
Think of their faults, or else I'll think it's your fault,
give up your case, and put you out to grass."
I loved once, handsome fellow that I am,
a bundle of deceits, well over fifty;
and one of her innumerable faults
was that she had a belly big enough
to hold, as well as endless other trifles,
as many sheaves of paper as a desk,
as many Greeks as did the Trojan horse."
You may have heard some village had a nut-tree
whose trunk was more than wide enough to hold
a workman and his wife and children too;
well, her great paunch could hold a weaver's household.
I wanted, with good reason, to forget her;
but memory prompted me to think of jasmines,
white orange-blossom and Madonna lilies,
of gauzy veils and pretty petticoats.
But then, more sensibly, I thought to think of
those things which I thought most resembled her:
baskets of pumpkins, ancient trunks and mailbags
50 LOPE DE VEGA I.ii I.ii THE DOG IN THE MANGER 51

stuffed with old letters, mattresses and bolsters. who's envious of me.
So love and hope were turned to disregard, DIANA: Jealous, maybe. Read it.
and I forgot said paunch for evermore TEODORO: I know I'll only wonder at your wit.
-which was so huge (without exaggeration)
you could have hid four pestles in its folds. (He reads:)
TEODORO: Marcela has no defects I could think of;
To love because we see another love
I won't forget her.
is merely envy. If we say we're jealous
TRISTAN: Forge ahead, don't falter!
but not in love, love's theorists disapprove;
TEODORO: She has no faults, just graces.
such jealousy's impossible, they tell us.
TRISTAN: Think of those things
My love, though, springs from jealousy; distressed,
but that won't win her ladyship's good graces."
although I know I'm handsomer, I see
(The Countess enters.) with envy that another seems more blessed
in having won a love that's lost to me.
DIANA: Teodoro. I let "I dare not" wait upon "I would";"
TEODORO: It's her! don't love, but feel a jealousy intense;
DIANA: Attend. know, since I would be loved, that love I should,
TEODORO: Your servant, madam. yet neither yield, nor offer a defence.
TRISTAN: If she's found out, all three of us are done for. Thus what I mean I show, but do not show.
DIANA: A friend of mine, uncertain of her skill, Let he who can, say what I mean; I know. 26
has asked me to compose for her this love-note; DIANA: What do you think?
for friendship's sake, I felt I should, but knowing TEODORO: That if it fits the case,
so little of love, I want you to improve it. I've not seen better. Yet I can't imagine
Here, read it. how jealousy could ever engender love;
TEODORO: Madam, how could I compete love always was its father."
with what you've written? That would be presumptuous. DIANA: I suspect
Pray send it to your friend, I need not read it. the lady found the man in question pleasing,
DIANA: Read it. but not desirable; but when she saw him
TEODORO: Your doubts astonish me. I've never courting another woman, she was roused
used lovers' language; this must teach me how to. by jealousy to love him. Could that be?
DIANA: What, never, ever? TEODORO: It could, my lady; yet such jealousy
TEODORO: I've so many faults, must still have had a source, and that was love.
I'm far too diffident to dare to love. Causes produce effects, and not vice versa.
DIANA: Your diffidence explains, then, your disguising. DIANA: I couldn't say, Teodoro. But I think
TEODORO: Me? Where, or when? that's how it was with her; this lady told me
DIANA: They tell me that the steward she'd merely been attracted by that man,
saw you disguised last night. but when she saw him loved, a desperate horde
TEODORO: Some prank, perhaps; of hot desires beset the road to honour,
Fabio and I, I fear, are always fooling. and stripped her soul of virtuous Intentions."
DIANA: Read, read. TEODORO: Your note is finely phrased; I dare not match it.
TEODORO: I think some enemy has said this, DIANA: Go in and try.
52 LOPE DE VEGA I.ii I.ii THE DOG IN THE MANGER 53

TEODORO: I dare not. He serves you here all day; I expect he's busy.
DIANA: Do, I beg you. DIANA: He's never out at night?
TEODORO: Your ladyship must mean to prove me wanting. TRISTAN: I don't go with him;
DIANA: I'll wait here. Come back soon. I've got this broken hip.
TEODORO: I shall, my lady. DIANA: How did you get it?
DIANA: Tristan, attend. TRISTAN: I might reply, as faithless wives reply,
TRISTAN: I re-appear to serve you, when they've been battered by their jealous husbands
though shamed, I must admit, by my appearance. and people see the bruises on their faces:
The secretary, my master, is bankrupt lately; "I tumbled down the stairs."
and yet a gentleman is ill-advised, DIANA: You fell?
his servant being his harbinger, his mirror, TRISTAN: So far,
his frontispiece, to let him look too shabby; my ribs could count how many steps there were.
for when the master rides, behind his man, DIANA: That was to be expected, if you threw
some wit once said, the lackey's like a ladder: your hat and put the light out, though, Tristan.
the eye must climb up one to see the other." TRISTAN: Geroff!30 God help us now, she knows it all!
I reckon he can't help it. DIANA: No comment?
DIANA: Does he gamble? TRISTAN: I was trying to remember
TRISTAN: I wish to God he did, for those who do just how and when it happened; now I do.
are never short of cash, some way or other. Last night it was, there were some black bats flying
In days gone by, kings used to learn a trade, around the house; I threw my hat at them;
so if they lost their kingdom or were exiled one flew towards the light, and trying to hit it
by war or shipwreck, they could earn their living. by chance I hit the lamp, and then my feet
Likewise, it's wise to learn to gamble early; both went from under me, and I went flying.
in time of need, that noble art provides DIANA: Your explanation's very neat, I'm sure.
an easy livelihood for little labour. But I remember reading that the blood
You'll see a painter, straining every nerve, of those same fly-by-nights" --of bats, I mean­
produce a perfect likeness, and some idiot is useful to remove unwanted hair;32
tell him it's not worth tuppence; but your gambler since opportunity is Fortune's forelock"
call out his bet, and when his play comes off I swear I'll have their blood, and so at once
just rake the money in, hand over fist. remove their opportunity and them!
DIANA: He's not a gambler, then? TRISTAN: Good God, milady's in a scorching temper!
TRISTAN: He's far too cautious. She'll have me battered for bat-burglary."
DIANA: In love, no doubt? DIANA: My mind's a whirl!
TRISTAN: In love? You must be joking! (FABIO enters.)
The man's an iceberg.
DIANA: What, a man so handsome,
FABIO: Your ladyship, the marquis
Ricardo has arrived.
so elegant, so clever and so young,
must surely seek some harmless entertainment?
DIANA: Bring chairs at once.
TRISTAN: I wouldn't know; I deal in straw and barley, (The Marquis RICARDO and CELIO enter.)
not billets-doux, nor bill-and-cooing either. RICARDO: With that solicitude which Love instils
54 LOPE DE VEGA I.ii Lii THE DOG IN THE MANGER 55

in every breast whose yearning for requital may interpose.

makes light of any obstacle, Diana, RICARDO:
that selfsame Love sends me to see and serve you.
I urge my suit, although my fond ambition
may seem misplaced to some more hopeful rival
whose arrogance is greater than his ardour.
your ladyship appears today so handsome,
that seeing you assures me you are well; TEODORO:
for woman's surest health is in her beauty, RICARDO:
and when she's gracious, elegant and gay
'tis purest ignorance, a foolishness DIANA:
all must condemn, to ask if she be well.
Aware, then that you are, for so your beauty RICARDO:
and brio must attest, I venture rather
-strange though it seem-to ask you, how am I? DIANA:
DIANA: Your lordship, to equate what we call brio" RICARDO:
with beauty is a notion eloquent
of your wise judgment and perceptive mind; CELIO:
as for your state of health, I daren't imagine
I know your lordship well enough to tell.
RICARDO: Yet one who knows my honourable intentions
should condescend so far; and since your kinsfolk DIANA:
approve my purpose, only your approval TEODORO:
is needful, madam, to sustain my hope.
If, as I own that land (and rank to match) DIANA:
which by inheritance are lately mine, TEODORO:
I ruled from where the sun most fiercely burns DIANA:
to where it nestles in Aurora's arms;
had I the gold men worship in the West,
pearls from the South-the frozen tears of Heaverr" _
and diamonds from the East, in quest of which
they scour the seven seas, all should be yours;
I'd sail from shores which scarcely see the sun,
impressing with the prints of wooden feet
the salty plains of earth's remotest oceans,
to reach at last the Antipodean strands,
the utmost limits of man's sovereignty.
DIANA: Marquis, your love is utterly persuasive,
and flattered by your nobly phrased professions
I shall consider them, though Federico
I know the count is devious,
though my superior in nothing else;
yet have no doubt the justice of my claim
will blind his sight and bring his schemes to shame.
(TEODORO enters.)
I've done your bidding.
If you're busy, madam,
it would be wrong to trespass on your time.
Think nothing of it; though I do confess
I have to write to Rome.
There's nothing worse
than tedious visits when one's corresponding.
You're very shrewd.
In my desire to serve you.
Well, Celio, what d'you think?
I'd like to see
your noble suit rewarded suitably.
(RICARDO exits.)
You've written it?
I've written it, my lady;
not confidently, but as you commanded.
Show me.
Pray read it, madam.
So I shall.
(She reads:)
To adore one whom we see another adore
is envy, if we would not otherwise;
for if we had no mind to adore before,
we could not after, through another's eyes.
But when love sees what it admires among
another's trophies, it's provoked to speak;
for what offends the heart leaps to the tongue,
as colour rises to the blushing cheek.
I say no more, for fear, as an inferior
-although to spurn the promise of such bliss
may seem remiss-to offend one far superior,
and all I know and seek to show is this:
56 LOPF DE VEGA I.ii
If I acknowledged what I hope is true,
I'd seem to claim much more than is my due.
How properly you put it.
TEODORO: Are you serious?
DIANA: I wish to God I weren't!
TEODORO: What's that you say?
DIANA: That yours, Teodoro, is the better version.
TEODORO: I'm sorry; if a servant's known to know
more than his master, he's well on the way
to falling out of favour, for they say
a certain king said to his favourite once:
"I'm troubled by a letter that I've written;
write me another, and I'll choose between them."
The courtier did, and his was much the better;
but when he saw the king preferred his version,
he told the eldest of three sons he had:
"We all must fly the country; I'm in danger";
and when the lad, bewildered, asked the reason,
replied: "the king knows I know more than he does.?"
And that's what may have happened here to me.
DIANA: Not so; for though I say yours is the cleverer,
the point is that it follows my intention,
not that you need presume, when your pen pleases,
I cease to trust the sharpness of my own;
though as a woman I am prone to error
and not too wise, perhaps, as may appear.
You say here that you fear, as an inferior,
to offend one far superior; yet in love
that cannot be, and you must be mistaken.
It seems to me inferiors can't offend
by loving; only hating gives offence."
TEODORO: That's Nature's logic; but the painters show
Phaeton and Icarus hurtling from the heavens,"
one drawn by golden horses, then struck down,
the other borne aloft on wings of wax,
soon melted by the fierceness of the sun.
DIANA: The sun would not have done that, if the sun
had been a woman. If you serve a lady,
serve on, be bold, for love is perseverance;
women aren't made of stone. I'll take this paper;
I.ii THE DOG IN THE MANGER 57
I would be wise to study it more closely.
TEODORO: It's full of errors.
DIANA: None that I can see.
TEODORO: You honour my desire to serve. Here's yours.
DIANA: You keep it. No, destroy it.
TEODORO: Destroy it?
DIANA: Why, yes;
what matter that it's lost, if much more may be?
(She exits)
TEODORO: She's gone. Whoever could suppose a woman
so noble and so shrewd would own to loving
so suddenly? But maybe I'm mistaken.
And yet she's never said, as I remember:
"What matter that it's lost, if much more may be?"
More may be lost? She could mean, by the woman
of whom she spoke.... But surely that's dissembling;
that "other woman" must be she herself.
But no, the countess is too proud, too prudent,"
and such a love would cross her clear intention.
In Naples princes daily come to court her
whose slave I couldn't be; I'm in great danger.
Knowing I love Marcela, she's pretending,
to lead me on; and yet such fears are groundless.
Pretence could not produce such bashful blushing,
such trembling when she said: "More may be lost."
What rose, its petals opening like eyes,
has ever smiled, through crimson lips, to see
the tears of dawn, so radiantly as she,
suffused with scarlet, turned her eyes on me?
What pale-skinned apple ever burned so brightly?
What I have seen and heard, I must suppose,
unless I'm mad, too little to bespeak
true passion, yet too much to be pretence.
But wait, my thoughts, you fly too fast toward greatness,
toward loveliness; you know too well Diana
is peerless both in wisdom and in beauty.
(MARCELA enters.)
MARCELA: Teodoro, dare we talk here?
TEODORO: Such a meeting
58 LOPE DE VEGA I.ii
makes light of any obstacle, Marcela;
death would be welcome, love, on your account.
MARCELA: I'd die two thousand deaths to be with you.
I waited, like the lonely nightingale,"
for day, and when I saw, where in the East
ApoIlo first appears, Aurora wake him,
I cried: "I too must waken my ApoIlo."42
Such news! The countess wouldn't go to bed
until she'd set her mind at rest, Teodoro;
and envious of my happiness, my friends
told her the truth-so much for servants' friendship!
In short, she knows; of course, since she's Diana
the moon is always meddling with us lovers.
She peeped, and saw our secret; but I'm certain
that only good will come of it, Teodoro.
I told her that I knew you meant to marry me,
and whispered too how tenderly I love you.
I praised your virtues, talents, style and grace;
and then she showed such kindly condescension
that she rejoiced at my regard for you;
and when she learned how pure were your intentions
she promised me that we should soon be married.
I'd thought she'd bring the house about our ears,
dismiss us both, and punish all the rest;
instead her high nobility of blood,
her prudence and perfection of discernment
acknowledged your true worth; oh, those who serve
so wise a lord are blessed a thousandfold."
TEODORO: She promised we should marry?
MARCELA: Can you question
she'd show her noble birth?
TEODORO: I was mistaken!
To think I thought perhaps the countess loved me;
how stupid to suppose she spoke of me!
A hawk that soars so high could never stoop
to such unworthy prey."
MARCELA: What's that you're muttering?
TEODORO: She spoke to me, but didn't say she knew
that it was I who left her rooms last night.
MARCELA: How prudent of her; if she'd known we'd spoken,
Lii THE DOG IN TIlE MANGER 59
she would have been obliged to punish us;
unless that's what she meant to do, for marriage
is quite the kindest punishment for love.
TEODORO: It is, and love's most honourable cure.
MARCELA: One you desire?
TEODORO: With all my heart.
MARCELA: Confirm it.
TEODORO: With open arms, which are the twirls and swirls
that love's sharp quill describes; what better flourish,
when lovers sign and seal, than an embraces"
(The Countess enters) ,
DIANA: How well you make amends! I'm very pleased.
Those who reprove are always quite delighted
to see such ample proof of reformation.
Pray, don't be disconcerted or concerned.
TEODORO: I told Marcela, madam, that last night
I left here in such anguish and distress,
supposing that your ladyship might think
my honourable intention we should wed
dishonourable to you, I thought I'd die;
but when she reassured me that you'd shown us
such grace and favour as to bless our union,
I seized her in my arms. I shan't deceive you,
invent (as well I might) some foolish story,
because I know there's nothing more disarming
to one as wise as you than truthfulness.
DIANA: Teodoro, the disloyalty you've shown me
in failing to respect my noble house
(
,I should properly be punished, and the kindness
with which I treated both of you last night
can scarce excuse such licence, for when love
descends to shamelessness, no privilege
may be invoked to stay its punishment.
Marcela, till you marry, will be better
kept under lock and key. I've no desire
the other maids should see you two together,
for fear they alI might folIow her example.
So: Dorotea!
(DOROTEA enters)
60 LOPE DE VEGA
DOROTEA: Madam?
DIANA: Take this key,
and see you lock Marcela in my chamber.
A few days' needlework will be no hardship;
you needn't think I'm being petulant.
DOROTEA: What's this, Marcela?
MARCELA: This is tyranny!
A cruel mistress and a crueler fate!
She's locking me away on his account.
DOROTEA: Don't worry, then; when jealousy's the jailer,
Love has a master key and laughs at locksmiths."
(DOROTEA and MARCELA exit;
the Countess and TEODORO remain)
DIANA: So then, Teodoro, you've a mind to marry?
TEODORO: No mind for anything unlessyou wish it;
and you should understand that my offence
is not so gross as others may have told you.
You know that Envy has a scorpion's tongue,
and Ovid, if he'd ever been a servant
would hardly have described its dismal dwelling
as if it lived in lonely vales or mountains;"
it lives and reigns among us servants here.
DIANA: It isn't true, then, that you love Marcela?
TEODORO: I could survive without her.
DIANA: But they tell me
you've lost your wits about her?
TEODORO: , Wits like mine
are no great loss; and yet you must believe me,
your ladyship, that even though Marcela
may merit such devotion, I've not shown it.
DIANA: You mean you haven't murmured such endearments
as might beguile a somewhat loftier lady?
TEODORO: Fine words cost little.
DIANA: Tell me what you told her.
How does a man, Teodoro, court a woman?
TEODORO: As one who loves and pleads for love's requital,
wrapping one half-truth in a thousand lies.
DIANA: But with what words?
TEODORO: You press me strangely, madam.
I.ii I.ii THE DOG IN THE MANGER 61
"Those eyes of yours," I said, "those radiant globes
beam forth the light by which my eyes perceive
the pearls and coral of that mouth divine .... ,,48
DIANA: "Divine?"
TEODORO: Why yes, your ladyship, such language
is every ardent lover's A.B.C.
DIANA: You've little taste. Don't be surprised, Teodoro,
if I lose confidence in your discernment,
for I, who observe Marcela rather closer,
know that her defects far exceed her graces.
Besides, I've often reason to reprove her
because she's none too clean ... but then you love her;
I wouldn't want to interfere, although
you'd be surprised the things ... but that's enough
of your Marcela's virtues, or her vices;
I'm sure I wish your marriage well, Teodoro.
But since you know so much of love, advise me
-as I hope you'll be happy with Marcela­
about that friend of mine; for many days now
she's known no rest for love of an inferior.
The very thought of love offends her honour,
but if she checks herself, she's quite distracted
by jealousy; and he, all unaware
of so much passion, though he's shrewd, is timid.
TEODORO: What do I know of love, your ladyship?
I swear I don't know how I could advise you.
DIANA: But don't you love Marcela, as you say?
What of those fond endearments? If the doors
could only speak, they'd say....
TEODORO: They could say nothing!
DIANA: Ah, but you're blushing; what your tongue denies,
your reddening cheeks confess."
TEODORO: Marcela's stupid
if she's been saying ... I took her hand, it's true;
I didn't keep it though, but gave it back.
What's she complaining of?
DIANA: Well, but some hands
are like the pax the priest sends round at Mass;
before they give it back, the faithful kiss it.50
62 LOPE DE VEGA I.ii I.ii THE DOG IN THE MANGER 63

TEODORO: ...Marcela is a fool. I own I ventured to go to help a friend you've seen attacked,
with seemly deference to cool my lips and come to his assistance when he's dead.
with snow and lilies, ...
.~
In any case, how can it be more proper,
DIANA: Ah, with snow and lilies? whatever petty protocol prescribes,
I'll make a note that such a poultice serves for honourable hands to hide their faces?
to cool a burning heart. Well now.-advise me, TEODORO: I'm conscious of your condescension, madam.
TEODORO: The lady whom you speak of, if she longs DIANA: When you're a faithful old retainer." maybe
for one so far beneath her, but she fears you'll give your hand wrapped in your cloak, but now
to indJlge her passion would besmirch her honour, you are my secretary; that's to say:
might by some trick contrive to lie with him keep my fall secret, if you seek to rise,
with~t his recognizing who she was." (She exits)
DIANA: There'dalways be the danger he might guess.
TEODORO: Dare I believe this can be true? I dare;
Would it be best to kill him?
Diana's fair, but she's a woman too,
TEODORO: They do say
She sought my hand, and when she felt it there
Marcus Aurelius, when his wife Faustina
fear robbed her cheeks of all their rosy hue.
desired to enjoy a handsome gladiator,
She trembled, I could tell; yet still I fear.
killed him, gave her his blood, and cooled her ardour;"
What shall I do? Why, seize this happy chance;
but Roman remedies like those were fine for pagans,
although the venture's outcome's so unclear
not for us Christians, surely,
my fears must yield before my hopes advance.
DIANA: True, Teodoro.
I'll wrong Marcela cruelly if I drop her;
There's no such thing these days as a Lucretia,
too often women find men they thought true
or a Torquatus, a Virginius;
have played them false, and that's not right or proper.
and in their day, of course, they'd their Faustinas,
But they respond to whims and fancies too,
and their Poppeas, and their Messalinas."
and when it suits them, they play fast and loose.
Write me a memorandum on the matter.
Sauce for the gander, then, sauce for the goose."
I'll leave you to it.
(She falls)
Ah! Don't you see I've fallen?
Why stand there staring? Here, give me your hand.
TEODORO: I feared to offer it, out of respect.
(He wraps his hand in his cloak and offers it)
DIANA: How gracious, and how gauche! Why wrap it up?
TEODORO: Otavio, when you go to Mass, gives his
wrapped in his cloak like this."
DIANA: His is a hand
I don't desire of him, an ancient hand,
a hand that should be shrouded like a corpse,
To wrap yourself in silk, so one who's fallen
is made to wait, is like to waste time dressing
 ".i THE DOG IN THE MANGER 65

which then crops scarlet pastures (so some poet

described, you know, the first fair flush of dawn);"
well so shone she, though with two suns-her eyes­
the fair Diana, Countess of Belflor.
RICARDO: My love, no doubt, and your desire to please me
has made you paint with words your "splendid morning"
and see her as the sun, and rightly so;
like him she sails past several signs-her suitors.
ACT II There's Federico waiting to be gilded!
CELIO: Which of you two, then, is the Bull I spoke of?
RICARDO: She'll shine on him first, so he'll be the Bull
Count FEDERICO and LEONIDa, his servant, enter.
(although its horns might make him shun the name);
FEDERICO: You saw her here? but she'll move on to me, I'll be the Lion. 58
LEONIDa: She strode into the church, FEDERICO: Is that Ricardo there?
LEONIDa; Yes.
as morning moves over the meadows, spreading
FEDERICO: If he weren't here
its light across their broidered counterpane.
But piety won't detain her long within; it would be stranger.
LEONIDa; He looks well, the marquis.
I know the priest; he's skimpier than he should be.
FEDERICO: You'd hardly flatter him more, if you were jealous.
FEDERICO: If I could speak to her!
LEONIDa: Surely your kinship LEONIDa: Are you?
FEDERICO: Of course, especially if you praise him.
requires her to admit your company?
LEONIDa: But why? She looks on none of you with favour.
FEDERICO: My kinship's suspect now that I'm her suitor;
FEDERICO: She might, though; she's a Woman.
I never felt so timid till I loved her.
LEONIDa:
You'll often find a man will see a lady But a vain one,
without compunction, as her friend or kinsman, so proud and so disdainful, you can all
until he seeks her hand; but when he loves her, feel reassured.
FEDERICO: It's true, all handsome women
although she's cool to all, he'll see her less;
he'll feel less confident, and scarcely speak. are haughty.
LEONIDa; Handsome is, as handsome does."
And so it is with me and my fair cousin;
CELIO; Here she comes now.
my passion brings me pain, since it denies me
RICARDO:
my greatest joy, for truly I was happier My night will turn to day, then.
to see her freely as I did before. CELIO: You'll speak to her?
RICARDO; Yes, if my rival lets me.
(The Marquis RICARDO and CELIO enter)
CELIO: She came on foot, with several of her household. (OTAVIO, FABIO, TEODORO and the COUNTESS enter,
RICARDO: The church was near, she proud of her appearance, followed by MARCELA, DOROTEA and ANARDA, wearing cloaks;
and so, no doubt, she deigned to grace the street. the COUNT approaches at one side)
CELIO: Perhaps you've seen the sun, some splendid morning, FEDERICO; I waited, madam, hoping I might see you.
rise in the east, and with its golden beams DIANA: How very kind, my lord.
adorn the constellation of the Bull, RICARDO: And I, my lady,
66 LOPE DE VEGA I1.i II.i
was eager, likewise, to attend and serve you.
DIANA: But marquis, how gallant of you, how gracious!
TRISTAN:
RICARDO: A paltry proof of my devotion, madam.
FEDERICO: I fear I'm not well liked and out of favour.
LEONIDO: Don't be so downcast, talk to her.
FEDERICO: Ah, Leonido,
what wonder if a man falls silent, knowing
that if he speaks, no-one desires to listen?
(Accompanying the Countess,
all exit by the further door; TEODORO remains)
TEODORO: My strange new thoughts, I see you mount the air,
and laugh to see you fly, although you're mine." TEODORO:
Restrain your ardour, stay!-thus I recall you,
yet urge you on, for if your enterprise
is mad, what else am I? But when the prize
is one so great, ambition seems less reckless.
Perhaps indeed you'll claim, in your defence,
the prize I seek is infinite; and yet TRISTAN:
what basis, tell me first, has your ambition? TEODORO:
You sigh for one you serve? You'll say you've reason
if you believe your eyes; but you should tell them TRISTAN:
you're building towers of diamond on straw."
I'll lay the blame on you if all goes ill,
and yet the guilt'S not yours alone, but shared;
for you may claim, when I'm alarmed how high
. above my heart my passion's let you fly, TEODORO:
my lowly state makes you ascend the sky.
When one offended thus defends the offender, TRISTAN:
all must assume he knows he caused the offence.
Thus I must give my blessing to your boldness; TEODORO:
for both of us can offer this excuse: TRISTAN:
you, that you're lost on my account, and I, TEODORO:
that I but followed you, not knowing whither. TRISTAN:
Go with my blessing then, though they destroy you TEODORO:
a thousand times for your presumptuousness.
One so well lost can't be accounted lost. TRISTAN:
Others give thanks for what they find, but I'll TEODORO:
thank you for what I lose, for if I lose, TRISTAN:
that loss will be a gain I gladly choose.
- - - - ---.- -- " - - - - ­
THE DOG IN THE MANGER 67
(TRISTAN enters)
If you've the time, amid your lamentations
for this, in which Marcela finds in you
some consolation for her late confinement,
I shan't charge porterage, for as at court,
those they've no need of, no-one wants to see.
It's as in this case, when a man's in favour,
he's badgered and beset by crowds of callers,
but when he falls from grace, since Fortune's fickle,
they keep away as if he had the plague.
So, should we wash this note in vinegar,
to disinfect it?
Let me see it, sourpuss.
You've portered it, it's had one soak already.f
(He reads)
"Teodoro, dearest husband ...." Husband? Stupid!
What stupid nonsense!
Yes, she's very stupid.
Now that I've risen so, d'you think I've time
for painted butterfliest'"
For God's sake read it.
Don't act so high and mighty! Wine breeds flies;
that doesn't mean the wine's less well regarded;
and I remember when your "butterfly,"
Marcela, was a glorious golden eagle.
Soaring as now, to reach the very sun,
I'm quite astonished she can still be seen.
A very proper sentiment, I'm sure.
What shall we do with that, though?
This.
You've torn it?
I have.
But why?
It seemed the quickest way
to answer it.
But that's unjust and cruel.
Don't be surprised; I'm not the man I was.
You lovers are like love's apothecaries.
They keep prescriptions, you keep billy-does.
68 LOPE DE VEGA IIj IIj THE DOG IN THE MANGER 69
Blue violet oil, to cure a lover's blues. MARCELA: But I adore you, darling, and I've found you!
Syrup of borage, for a sharp disdain, TEODORO: Mind what you say and do; at court, you know,
to soothe your wounded pride and ease the pain." the very tapestries tell tales at times.
For absence, since it makes the heart grow fonder Why do you think they've human figures on them?
of others, sticking-plaster, or don't wander. To warn us, living spies may lurk behind them.
For those proposing marriage, cure the urge King Croesus' son was dumb, but when he saw
or, after ten days' bliss, procure a purge. a man attack his father, he cried out;"
For men whose heavenly sign is Capricorn, so painted figures may inform against us.
such patients need the patience to bear scorn; MARCELA: You read my note?
while those whose ladies long for jewels and dresses TEODORO: I tore it up unread,
need purses full of pills for their excesses." and tore my love up too; I've learned my lesson.
In short, all year they pile up their prescriptions; MARCELA: Are these the pieces?
then when it's time to pay, whether the patient's TEODORO: Yes.
alive or dead, they tear up all his papers; MARCELA: You've torn our love?
so you've closed your accounts, and torn Marcela's. TEODORO: Isn't that better than to run such risks,
TEODORO: I think you've had too much to drink, as usual. to know no peace, one moment to the next?
TRISTAN: And I think your ambition's turned your head. You must agree with me, we can't go on;
TEODORO: Each man, Tristan, has his own chance of greatness; it's far too dangerous.
not having it, is not knowing how to seize it. MARCELA: What are you saying?
Count of Belflor, or die in the attempt! TEODORO: I'm saying I'm determined not to upset
TRISTAN: A famous duke called Caesar Borgia, sir, the countess any more.
chose the device "Be Caesar or be nothing." MARCELA: My eyes have often
It turned out badly, though, his schemes miscarried, betrayed how much they feared to see this truth
and then SOme waspish wit wrote: "Caesar, you said that's now so plain.
'Be Caesar or be nothing'; you were both.,,66 TEODORO: Marcela, I must go.
TEODORO: Henceforth Tristan, that motto shall be mine, We can't be lovers now, but let's be friends.
and so let fickle fortune do its worst! DOROTEA: Teodoro, can you say that to Marcela?
TEODORO: I say it because I don't want any trouble
(MARCELA and DOROTEA enter.)
and I respect the honour of the house
DOROTEA: I'm sure if anyone who serves the countess that's made me what I am.
MARCELA: But listen!
has sympathy with your distress, it's me.
TEODORO: Leave me!
MARCELA: We've been so close since she imprisoned me,
and I've such cause to thank you, Dorotea, MARCELA: Don't be like that!
TEODORO: Don't be so dense, so stupid! (Exits)
that no one's friendship matters more to me.
Anarda thinks I don't know she loves Fabio, MARCELA: Tristan, Tristan!
TRISTAN: What?
and it was she who brought my troubles on me;
MARCELA: What does all this mean?
she told the countess all about Teodoro.
TRISTAN: A little flightiness; he's joined the ladies.
DOROTEA: Teodoro's here.
MARCELA: My darling! MARCELA: What ladies?
TRISTAN: Some I know; the oh-so-sweet sort.
TEODORO: Wait, Marcela.
70 LOPE DE VEGA IIj II.i THE DOG IN THE MANGER 71

MARCELA: Tell him from me.... and yet I love a man much more like you.
TRISTAN: Don't tell me; I can't stop. FABIO: Like me?
I'm that sword's scabbard, I'm that letter's seal, MARCELA: Aren't you like you?
that traveller's cloak, the box that holds that hat, FABIO: Like me, Marcela?
that dancer's step, a day in that wild winter,68 MARCELA: If I'm pretending, and not wild about you;
that body's shadow and that courier's horse, if I don't find you handsome, dearest Fabio;
that comet's tail, that summer's sudden storm. if I'm not yours, then may I know what torture
In short and finally, that finger's nail; it is to love and be repaid with scorn.
don't try to cut me off, we go together. (Exits) FABIO: You must be lying-or perhaps you're dying,
MARCELA: Well, what d'you make of that? and making restitution for your sins
DOROTEA: How can I tell? by paying back my love. But if you're fooling,
I dare not speak. what are you after?
MARCELA: I dare. DOROTEA: Fabio, seize your chance.
DOROTEA: I can't. Be bold; just now Marcela needs to love you.
MARCELA: I will. FABIO: It won't be truly love unless she wants to.
DOROTEA: Take care, Marcela, that was good advice DOROTEA: Teodoro's flying high, and dropping her.
about the tapestries." FABIO: Marcela, I must go and look for him.
MARCELA: Love fears no danger I'll do, it seems, when he plays hard to get.
when it's aroused by jealousy and anger. You're like a letter that's addressed: "Teodoro.
] know how proud the countess is, or else Please forward, if he's not at home, to Fabio."
I'd think Teodoro had some expectations. Not very flattering, but I'll overlook it.
He's very much in favour these days; why? We'll talk about it. Your obedient servant."
DOROTEA: Hush, you're annoyed. (He exits)
MARCELA: Annoyed? I'll be avenged.
DOROTEA: What's this?
I'm not so stupid that I can't make trouble.
MARCELA: I don't know. I'm in such a state,
(FABIO enters) I don't know what I'm doing. But doesn't Anarda
love Fabio?
FABIO: Isn't the secretary here? DOROTEA: Yes.
MARCELA: Why ask? MARCELA: I'll be avenged on both then,
You're making fun of me. for Love's the god of envy and revenge.
FABIO: For goodness' sake,
(The Countess and ANARDA enter)
I'm sent to look for him; my lady wants him.
MARCELA: Well, anyway, ask Dorotea, Fabio, DIANA: I've told you why; don't criticize me so.
what I've been saying about him. Isn't he ANARDA: Your explanation leaves me more confused.
a tedious fool, that secretary of ours? Marcela's here, with Dorotea, madam.
FABIO: What silly game is this? D'you think I'm fooled? DIANA: There's no one I'd be happier not to see.
Is this some plot you two have hatched between you? Marcela, leave us.
MARCELA: Some plot? Oh, yes! MARCELA: Coming, Dorotea?
FABIO: I swear you're up to something. It's as ] say, she hates me-or she fears me.
MARCELA: I admit I've listened to Teodoro's nonsense, (MARCELA and DOROTEA exit)
72 LOPE DE VEGA IIj IIj THE DOG IN THE MANGER 73

ANARDA: Now may I speak? (Music offstage)

DIANA: You may.
Who are those singers?
ANARDA: Those two admirers ANARDA: Fabio, madam, and Clara.
whom you just sent away adore you blindly, DIANA: Let's hope they'll raise my spirits.
and you in spurning them seem even colder ANARDA: Love and music
than Anaxarete or chaste Lucretia;"
go well together. Listen to the words.
and one who scorns so many....
DIANA: I'm beginning (Song offstage)
to tire of this. Would that we could cease loving when we should!
ANARDA: Who do you mean to marry? Would that we could cease loving when we would!
Couldn't the marquis equal or surpass
ANARDA: D'you hear the song? Hear how it contradicts you?
in splendour and nobility of birth
DIANA: I hear it, but I know myself, and know
the richest and most powerful of your suitors?
I can decide to love or not to love.
Might not a lady of the highest rank
ANARDA: I'll know you're more than human if you can!
be proud to wed your cousin Federico?
Why then dismiss them with such disrespect? (TEODORO enters)
DIANA: Because the one's insane, the other stupid, TEODORO: I hear from Fabio that you want to see me.
and you more fool than both, not understanding.. DIANA: I've wanted you a long time."
I don't love them, because I love another, TEODORO: At your service;
and love without a hope of remedy. forgive me if I've been remiss, my lady.
ANARDA: Lord save us! You, in love? DIANA: You must have seen my pair of noble suitors.
DIANA: Aren't I a woman? TEODORO: Yes, madam.
ANARDA: More like a woman's statue carved in ice, DIANA: Handsome, both of them.
on which the sun in heaven may shine in vain. TEODORO: Yes, very.
DIANA: And yet I love a man who's not my equal, DIANA: I really shouldn't like to choose between them
and all that ice lies melted at his feet. without consulting you. Which do you think
ANARDA: Who is it? I ought to marry?
DIANA: One whose name I dare not speak, TEODORO: How can I advise you
for shame to think how I belie my rank in matters which depend on personal taste?
in loving him; one who would harm my honour. Whichever you decide to make my master
ANARDA: Pasiphae loved a bull, Semiramis must be the better.
a horse, and other women other monsters DIANA: You reward me ill
I'd best not mention; can it harm your honour for valuing your advice on such a question.
to love a man, whoever he may be?72 TEODORO: But madam, aren't there other men about you
DIANA: All those who fall in love, can, if they will, who understand such things? Your steward, Otavio,
as easily fall out, and so shall 1. is so much older, and has more experience.
Yes, that's what I must do. DIANA: But I'd like you to like your future master.
ANARDA: You're sure you can? D'you think the marquis handsomer than my cousin?
DIANA: I can. Since when I wished to love, I loved, TEODORO: Yes, madam.
now I wish not to, I shall cease to love. DIANA: Very well, I choose the marquis.
74 LOPE DE VEGA
Take him the news, and see how he'll reward you.
(The Countess exits)
TEODORO: Whoever saw such a catastrophe!
So sudden a decision, such a change!
Were these my foolish hopes? Oh sun, whose fire
consumes the ambitious plumage of that mortal
who seeks an angel's beauty, scorch my wings.
Diana's tumbled to her foolishness."
How stupidly I trusted tender words!
How hard it is for those whom rank divides
to join their hearts in loving harmony!
And yet how strange if I'd not been beguiled
by eyes that Ulysses would find bewitching?"
I've no one else to blame; and after all,
what have I lost in losing her? I'll reckon
I had some fierce delirium or fever,
and while it lasted dreamed fantastic dreams.
Enough, ambition, think yourself no more
Count of Belflor, and steer back home to shore."
I'll love Marcela, she's the one for me.
Let lords love ladies; love needs parity."
Hopes conjured from the air, to air return;
the unworthy rise, but fall; they soar, but burn.
(FABIO enters)
FABIO: You've spoken to her ladyship?
TEODORO: This moment,
and I'm delighted, Fabio, for the countess
has finally consented to be married.
The suitors you just saw both worship her;
but she, with her exemplary discernment,
has picked the marquis.
FABIO: That was very wise.
TEODORO: She asked me to inform him, and supposed
he'd give me some reward, but you're my friend,
and I'd be glad to yield you that advantage.
Go quickly and receive it in my place.
FABIO: Such kindness shows me how much love lowe you.
I'll go like lightning and be back directly,
grateful to you, and thankful for the news.
IIj IIj THE DOG IN THE MANGER 75
The marquis should be proud. To have tamed the countess
is quite a conquest; she's a precious prize.
(FABIO exits, and TRISTAN enters)
TRISTAN: I hurried here to find you when I heard.
I'm all confused; is what they tell me true?
TEODORO: If it's bad news for me, Tristan, it must be.
TRISTAN: I saw those asses sitting on two chairs
and yammering like a pair of fulling-hammer.');
I'd no idea till now she'd chosen one.
TEODORO: Tristan, a moment since, that twisting sunflower,
that whirling weathervane, that brittle crystal,
that tidal river, that inconstant moon
well-named Diana, that. bewitching siren,
that monster of mutability, that woman
-determined, doubtless, to destroy me, solely
because I threatened her supremacy-
came here and asked me which of them I liked;
she wouldn't wed without consulting me!
I was so dumbstruck, so distraught, so crazy,
I couldn't even give a crazy answer.
At last she told me she preferred the marquis,
and I myself must go and tell him so.
TRISTAN: She's marrying then?
TEODORO: She's marrying the marquis.
TRISTAN: I think if you weren't so beside yourself,
though kicking a man who's down's not quite my style,
I might well mock you for your proud pretensions,
presuming to aspire to be a count.
TEODORO: I'm not aspiring now; expiring, maybe.
TRISTAN: It's all your fault.
TEODORO: I know, I can't deny it.
I was a fool to trust a woman's eyes.
TRISTAN: A woman's eyes? There's no more powerful poison
to human sense, Teodoro, I can tell you.
TEODORO: I'm so ashamed, I swear I can't raise mine.
Ah well, that's over, and the remedy
is to forget my love and all that's happened.
TRISTAN: And hurry back, regretful and repentant,
76 LOPE DE VEGA
to dear Marcela.
TEODORO: We'll soon make it up.
(MARCELA enters)
It's hard to feign a love we cannot feel,
MARCELA:
forget an old, true love and be resigned;
the harder I endeavour to conceal
my passionate thoughts, the more they plague my mind.
If honour so demands, and we can see
no other remedy for love's frustration,
to change an old love for a new, may be
a kind of cure, and no mean consolation."
Alas, though, if we think to love elsewhere
and yet our former love is still the master,
seeking revenge, we risk far worse despair.
To hope is better than to court disaster;
for often that desire we think to assuage
such remedies serve only to enrage. 79
TEODORO: Marcela.
MARCELA: Why, who's that?
TEODORO: It's me, Teodoro.
Have you forgotten me?
Forgotten you?
MARCELA:
So well, that I've become a different woman
in order not to have to think of you;
were I myself, I'd think of you and see you,
but now I couldn't if I wanted to.
How can you have the gall to talk to me?
How dare those lips presume to speak my name?
TEODORO: I only meant to test your constancy.
It proved so weak, I didn't have the chance.
I'm told you've turned your eyes and thoughts elsewhere,
and someone else is in my place already.
A wise man, so they say, will never test
MARCELA:
glass, or a woman's love." But don't pretend
you meant to test me. I know you, Teodoro;
a little glimpse of gold bemused your mind.
Well, how's it going? Hasn't it turned out
the way you thought? The game's not worth the candle?
Your new beloved's heavenly qualities
ll.i H.i THE DOG IN THE MANGER 77
haven't bestowed a corresponding bliss?
What's happened? What's the matter? You're upset.
Has the wind changed, the whirlwind veered around?
Are you returning to your lowlier love,
or only having fun and playing games?
My heart would overflow if you'd vouchsafe
my hopes a moment's happiness, Teodoro.
TEODORO: If it's a moment of revenge you want,
what vengeance could be sweeter, dear Marcela?
Remember, though, that love is nobly born.
Don't be so heartless; vengeance is unworthy,
and shames the victor in his hour of glory.
You've won, Marcela, and I'm yours again.
My fancy came to nothing; I forswear it.
Forgive my folly, if you love me still.
It isn't that I could not still pursue
those hopes by which I so offended you,
but memories of you make me return.
Let then those memories prevail on you
and waken yours, since I confess your victory.
MARCELA: No, God forbid I spoil your chance of bliss!
You're doing well, keep at it, persevere.
Don't weaken, or your love will think you're timid.
You find your happiness, as I've found mine.
Sinee you've left me, it can't be wrong if I
love Fabio now; he's not a better prospect,
but he's my wisest remedy, and revenge.
And so goodbye, I'm getting rather tired
of talking to you, and I shouldn't like
Fabio to see us, now we're almost married.
TEODORO: Stop her, Tristan, she's going!
TRISTAN: Madam, Madam!
Because he's started loving you again,
you mustn't think he stopped; and if he wronged you,
he's trying to put it right. Marcela, hear me!
MARCELA: What is it, then, Tristan?
TRISTAN: Just stop and listen.
(The Countess and ANARDA enter)
DIANA: Teodoro, and Marcela? What's all this?
 78 LOPE DE VEGA Hj Hj THE DOG IN THE MANGER 79

ANARDA: You seem put out to find those two together. TRISTAN: All right by me!
DIANA: How love's aroused by jealousy!" Anarda, TEODORO: No, stop her!
behind that screen! Let's both keep out of sight. MARCELA: I'm coming, darling!
MARCELA: Leave me, for goodness' sake. TRISTAN: Well, why don't you go, then,
ANARDA: They must have quarrelled. since I'm not stopping either one of you?
Tristan, it seems, is trying to talk them round. MARCELA: Alas, my love, I can't.
DIANA: He drives me mad, that pimping little lackey. TEODORO: No, nor can I.
TRISTAN: That silly woman who so dotes on him I'm rooted, like a rock amid the ocean!
dazzled his eyes and ears with empty beauty MARCELA: Come to my arms, my dearest!
no longer than a flash of summer lightning. TEODORO: Come to mine!
He scorns her riches now, and finds in you, TRISTAN: Why let me labour, if you didn't need, me?
your elegance, your grace, far richer treasure. ANARDA: Was this what you were hoping for?
That love flew like a comet, and was gone." DIANA: I see now
; Come here, Teodoro. how little you can trust a man-or woman.
1 mANA: He's more like a courier, TEODORO: How could you say such cruel things, my darling?
i the crafty villain! TRISTAN: I must say, now you're happily united,
I'l
'J

ii'
;;.'i
!': .
TEODORO: If Marcela says
it's Fabio she loves now, why bother me?
I reckon it's a bad lookout for brokers
when both the parties come to terms without 'em.
1Ft TRISTAN: Now he's annoyed! MARCELA: If I should ever leave you, love, for Fabio,
t't: TEODORO:
TRISTAN:
No doubt they're better suited.
You too? You're acting up? Come on now, stop it. TEODORO:
or for the world, may you prove false and slay me!
I reaffirm my love for you forever
i'
1
TEODORO: Why try to talk me round, you fool? and if I prove untrue, may Heaven reward me
i,i,
~
" l,',',{" " '

J. TRISTAN: , For my sake, by seeing you, my sweet, in Fabio's arms.

~;,C

~:ii ' give me your hand this once, sir. MARCELA: And will you right, my love, the wrong you did me?
~ij TEODORO: Have I ever TEODORO: What would I not do, love, for you
1\1; told her I loved somebody else? But she says.... and with you?
~q
'iij TRISTAN: That's just a trick, she wants to turn the tables. MARCELA: Tell me that every other woman's ugly.
~~i
",11" MARCELA: It's not a trick, it's true! TEODORO: Compared to you, of course. What else, my precious?
ijl TRISTAN: Shut up, you silly. MARCELA: There is one other thing, now you're so loving,
Come on now, both of you, you're being stupid. one little jealousy. It doesn't matter
TEODORO: ,I tried to make it up before; by God, though, Tristan being here....
I won't be friendly now. TRISTAN: Oh, don't mind me, go on;
MARCELA: I'm damned if I will. say what you want to, why not slander me?
TRISTAN: Don't swear. MARCELA: Tell me Diana's ugly. ,
MARCELA: I'm trying hard to still seem angry, TEODORO: As the devil!
but very nearly wilting. MARCELA: And stupid.
TRISTAN: Keep it up! TEODORO: Utterly.
DIANA: He's such a clever rogue, that lying lackey! MARCELA: And vain?
MARCELA: I've things to do, Tristan, please let me go! TEODORO: Insipid.
TEODORO: Yes, let her go. DIANA: I'll have to stop them, or they'll stop at nothing.

i '.
80 LOPE DE VEGA 1I.i lI.i THE DOG IN THE MANGER 81

I'm cold as ice, but blazing! I'm ready.

ANARDA: Don't, my lady! DIANA: Take this down.
TRISTAN: If you two want to castigate the countess, TEODORO: Sign of the cross ....
her figure, face and features, just you listen. I might feel safer if I drew a millionl'"
DIANA: How can I stay to hear such shameless slanders?
(The Countess sits in a tall chair; she dictates, and he writes)
TRISTAN: The first thing is....
DIANA: I'm certainly not waiting DIANA: When a lady of quality has declared herself to a man 0/
to hear the second thing, that would be foolish. the common sort, it is the height of commonness for him to
MARCELA: I must be going. converse again with another woman; but he who chooses not
to have greatness thrust upon him, may remain a fool. 86
(MARCELA exits, with a curtsey)83 TEODORO: Is that all?
TRISTAN: The countess! DIANA: Is it not enough? Now fold it.
TEODORO: What? The countess? ANARDA: What are you doing?
DIANA: Teodorol DIANA: Being foolish, and in love.
TEODORO: Madam? ANARDA: In love with whom?
TRISTAN: I think I hear thunder, DIANA: You still can't say, you ninny?
and I'm not waiting till the lightning strikes. Exits. I know the very stones here speak his name.
DIANA: Anarda, bring a writing-desk. Teodoro TEODORO: I've folded it; to whom should I address it?
is going to write a note, at my dictation. DIANA: Address it ... to yourself; don't tell Marcela,
TEODORO: My poor heart's beating nineteen to the dozen. but ponder it in private, at your leisure.
God help us if she heard what we were saying!
(She exits, he remains alone, and MARCELA enters)
DIANA: How fiercely love's aroused by jealousy!
To think he loves Marcela, and that I, TEODORO: I'm at a loss. This woman's heart, it seems,
for all my greater gifts, attract him less! must bleed for me, as doctors bleed their patients,
To think they both were making fun of me! by fits and starts; its pulse has palpitations.
MARCELA: What happened? I've been waiting anxiously
TEODORO: She's grumbling to herself. It's as I say:
you'd better watch your p's and q's at court, behind that screen, to hear what she might say.
TEODORO: She said she meant to marry you to Fabio.
for walls have ears, and tapestries have tongues.
This note I wrote is going to her estate,
(ANARDA enters with a little desk and writing materials) to have them send the money for your dowry.
ANARDA: I've brought this little one, and your materials. MARCELA: What are you saying?
DIANA: Come over here, Teodoro. Take your pen. TEODORO: Just that I wish you well,
TEODORO: It's death or banishment this time. and that hereafter, since you're getting married,
DIANA: You're ready? even in jest, you'd best not speak my name.
TEODORO: Quite ready. MARCELA: But listen ....
DIANA: But you can't kneel on the floor!" TEODORO: It's too late. No use complaining! (Exits)
Anarda, bring a cushion for his knees. MARCELA: That's not the reason; no, I can't believe it.
TEODORO: I'm quite all right. That giddy woman's made him change his mind.
DIANA: Do as I say, you fool. She's like a waterwheel, and he's her bucket;
TEODORO: Favours don't mix with anger and suspicion; first she goes down, and fills him with her favour,
when knees are being honoured, heads may roll! then she comes up, and empties him again."
82 LOPE DE VEGA IIj IIj THE DOG IN THE MANGER 83

Her ladyship no sooner calls to arms Did I then send for you, or do you jest?
than you abandon me, you ungrateful wretch! RICARDO: Fabio, what's this?
She wants you, so you leave me; then she drops you, FABIO: Could I have brought you here, sir,
and back you come to me; how can I bear it? without good reason, or even have come to see you,
(The Marquis and FABIO enter) unless I'd been instructed by Teodoro?
DIANA: Marquis, Teodoro must have been to blame.
RICARDO: Fabio, I couldn't wait a single moment
He heard me praise you more than Federico,
to kiss her hand in gratitude.
FABIO:
although the count's my cousin and a man
Marcela,
of noble rank and rich estate, and so
the marquis has arrived; go tell my lady.
must have presumed my choice was fixed on you.
MARCELA: Oh cruel, tyrannic jealousy, what now?
I beg your lordship to forgive these fools.
Is this the end of all my empty fancies?
RICARDO: For Fabio there could be no hope of pardon
FABIO: Why don't you go?
did not your presence offer sanctuary.•
MARCELA: I'm going.
FABIO:
I kiss your feet in gratitude, and trust
Say her husband
my constant love eventually may triumph. (Exits)
and my new master has arrived to see her.
DIANA: Pleased with yourself, you dolt?
(MARCELA exits) FABIO: Your ladyship,
RICARDO; Go to my lodgings, Fabio, and tomorrow why put the blame on me?
I shall reward you with a thousand ducats" DIANA: Just fetch Teodoro.
and one of Naples' finest breed of horses. How quickly, though, that tedious suitor came here
FABIO: Such generosity I can but praise, when I can think of nothing but Teodoro,
not merit. and how I'm torn apart by jealousy!
RICARDO: This is only a beginning. FABIO: There goes my horse! There go my thousand ducats!
Her ladyship may treat you as a servant; (FABIO exits, and the Countess remains, alone)
I count you as a friend.
FABIO: DIANA: Oh love, what do you want of me? When I
I kiss your feet.
RICARDO: This is not payment, merely gratitude. think I've forgotten him, he haunts my mind.
What do you want of me? But you'll reply:
(The Countess enters) "Not I, my shadow, following behlnd.v"
DIANA: Your lordship here? Oh jealousy, you will not be denied.
RICARDO; That's surely not surprising, Like advocates, you lead, but lead astray.
when having just been sadly disappointed Were she to heed the counsels you provide,
I found that you'd sent Fabio to inform me a woman's honour would not last a day.
you'd chosen me as your husband, and your servant. I love a man, my fearful heart's afloat
I kneel to kiss your feet, and my delight in dangerous seas; but how can I forget
drives me so mad with joy that simple madness that I'm an ocean, he a humble boat?
seems insufficient token of my gladness. How can it be the sea that's overset?
When, madam, did I ever think to win you, Yet now Love's bow's so stretched, I fear it might
or hope for more than yearning from afar? be split apart, if honour pulls too tight."
DIANA: I seek, but seek in vain, to give you answer. (TEODORO and FABIO enter)
84 LOPE DE VEGA
FABIO: The marquis nearly killed me; but the worst part,
to tell the truth, was losing all those ducats.
TEODORO: Want some advice?
FABIO: What's that?
TEODORO: Count Federico
was frantic at the news about the marquis.
Go now and tell him that the wedding's off;
you'll get your thousand ducats right away.
FABIO: I'll go like lightning.
TEODORO: Do. You wanted me?
DIANA: At least that idiot's had the wit to go.
TEODORO: I've spent an hour considering your note
and, carefully construing your intention.
I see that, though my diffidence was deference,
to have remained respectful, in the face
of such encouragement, was wrong and foolish.
And therefore I've decided to declare
I love you-though of course with great respect­
I love you-please forgive my being so nervous.
DIANA: Teodoro, I believe you. Why indeed
should you not love me, since I'm your employer
and have deserved your love by having prized you
and favoured you above my other servants?
TEODORO: I don't know what you mean.
DIANA: I mean, Teodoro,
that there's no more to know, or understand;
your thoughts should never stray a single step
beyond those bounds; curb any rash ambition,
for from a woman of such rank, Teodoro,
especially since your merits are so meagre,
the slightest favour should suffice to let you
live all your life in honour and contentment.
TEODORO: Your ladyship-forgive my boldness-suffers
from not infrequent fits of giddiness;
not mental, maybe, rather temperamental.
What was the use of holding out such hopes
that as you know the strain of my excitement
when first we spoke, brought me to such a state
that I was ill in bed for nearly a month,"
if when you find I'm cool, you turn to fire
JI.i JI.i THE DOG IN THE MANGER 85
and blaze with living flame, but when I burn
you freeze again to solid ice and snow?"
If only you would leave me with Marcela!
But no, you're like the dog in Aesop's fable;
you couldn't bear to let me marry her,
you're too consumed with jealousy for that,
but when you find I've turned from her to you,
you drive me mad and shatter my illusions.
Eat, or let others eat, then; I can't live
on empty hopes. Take me, or else I'm going
to love again the one I know loves me.
DIANA: Not that, Teodoro, I warn you, not Marcela.
Turn if you will to any other woman,
but not Marcela; she's no remedy.
TEODORO: Oh, isn't she? Your ladyship insists,
though she loves me and I love her, I go
and try my luck elsewhere, see how I fare?
In matters of the heart I'm not to follow
my inclinations, then, but someone else's?
I worship her, she worships me, our love
is pure and true and real.
DIANA: You shameless wretch,
I'll have you murdered on the spot.
TEODORO: What's this,
your ladyship?
DIANA: The beating you deserve
for such indecency, such boorishness."
(FABIO and the Count FEDERICO enter.)
FABIO: Hold on.
FEDERICO: You're right, we'd better not go in.
But better still, we will. What's this, my lady?
DIANA: Oh, nothing, just the sort of mild annoyance
servants so often cause.
FEDERICO: How may I serve you?
Your ladyship, what do you want of me?
DIANA: Only to speak with you, of private matters.
FEDERICO: I should have wished to find you more at ease.
DIANA: I am at ease; such things are only trifles.
do come along; we'll talk about the marquis.
86 LOPE DE VEGA
I'll tell you of my plans in that direction.
(DIANA exits)
FEDERICO: (aside) Fabio.
FABIO: My lord?
FEDERICO: .. I fancy her displeasure
may well conceal some fancy less displeasing.
FABIO: I swear I couldn't say, but I'm astonished
to see her ladyship treat him so badly.
She's never done a thing like that before.
FEDERICO: That handkerchief of his was soaked with blood!
(FEDERICO and FABIO exit)
TEODORO: Is this not love, oh god of love? Then what
would you propose we call such frantic states?
If highborn ladies love like this, they're not
to my mind ladies, but avenging Fates!
If noble rank denies you the delight
that humbler lovers proudly may enjoy,
why strike the one you love with savage spite,
. since to destroy him you yourself destroy?
This was the most unkindest cut of all!94
But would I could have kissed you, fairest hand,
and blessed the sweetness of your dying fall!
I could have wished a punishment more bland;
but if it was to touch you punished me
whoever found such joy in jealousy?
(TRISTAN enters)
TRISTAN: I'm like a cowardly swordsman, never there
till all the fighting's over.
TEODORO: Oh, Tristan!
TRISTAN: What's this then, sir? Blood on your handkerchief?
TEODORO: Love offers lovers blood, toil, tears and sweat,
arid this is how it teaches jealousy!"
TRISTAN: How stupid, though, for' goodness's sake, on her part!
TEODORO: Don't be so shocked, desire has turned her head;
but honour says to yield to that desire
would be depraved, and thus to her my face
is like a glass in which she sees her honour
and finds it ugly, so she attacks the mirror.
II.i II.i THE DOG IN THE MANGER 87
TRISTAN: Yes, sir, but if some jealous serving-wench
attacks me, pulls my hair and scrapes my face,
tears with her nails the collar she once made me,
because she finds I'm playing fast and loose,
that's fair enough from some clodhopping peasant,
in worsted stockings and great clumsy shoes;
but when so great a lady seems to lose
all sense of self-respect like that, it's shameful!
TEODORO: I just don't know. I'm going mad. One moment
she dotes on me, the next she turns against me.
She won't have me, or let me have Marcela,
and if I keep away, she finds at once
some trumped-up reason why she has to see me.
She's neither in, nor out; won't eat, or let eat.
"Dog in the manger" sums her up exactly.
TRISTAN: I heard some learned doctor or professor
once had a lady-housekeeper and valet
who never left off wrangling, day or night.
They fought at lunch, at dinner, even kept him
from sleeping-and from studying-with their shouting.
One day when he'd been teaching, it so happened
he had to hurry home, and when he got there
and burst into his bedroom unexpected,
he found them lying there, tucked up together,
all lovey-dovey. What d'you think he said?
"Thank God you two have made it up for once."
You're always fighting; perhaps you'll come to terms.
(The Countess enters)
DIANA: Teodoro?
TEODORO: Madam?
TRISTAN: Is she some sort of spook?
DIANA: I only came to enquire if you were well.
TEODORO: Can you not see?
DIANA: Are you all right?
TEODORO: Yes, thank you.
DIANA: You don't add: "At your service"?
TEODORO: I'm afraid
I can't be in your service long, at this rate.
DIANA: You know so little!
88 LOPE DE VEGA II.i

TEODORO: Yes indeed,' so little

that though I feel, I cannot comprehend.
I feel your blows, can't comprehend your words.
You're angry if I love you, or I don't.
If I forget, you write; if I remember,
you say I'm wrong; you'd have me understand you,
and if I understand you, I'm a fool.
So give me life, or death; give me some quarter,
some happy mean between these wild extremes."
Did I perhaps draw blood?
ACT III
DIANA:
TEODORO: Well, what do you think?
DIANA: Where is your handkerchief? FEDERICO and RICARDO enter.
TEODORO: Here.
RICARDO: You saw her?
DIANA: Show me.
FEDERICO: Yes, I saw her.
TEODORO: Why?
RICARDO:
DIANA: I want this blood. Teodoro, see Otavio; Saw her strike him?
FEDERICO: We all have servant problems, but to my mind
I told him you're to have two thousand ducats.
it wasn't only that; no, when a woman
TEODORO: What for?
What for? To buy more handkerchiefs. in her position goes as far as striking
DIANA:
a man full in the face, to me it's obvious
(The Countess exits) there may be other reasons. And besides,
TEODORO: Whoever saw the like? Teodoro's looking very prosperous lately;
TRISTAN: What witchery's this? you must have noticed; yes, that bears it out.
TEODORO: She's given me a cool two thousand ducats. RICARDO: Well, she's a woman, he's her servant, so....
TRISTAN: You wouldn't mind a dozen blows at that price. FEDERICO: Asking for trouble.
TEODORO..; For handkerchiefs, she said, and took the bloody one. RICARDO: There's an Aesop fable
TRISTAN: Droit de seigneur, it's called. 'Cause she's deflowered you, about two pots, that fits their case exactly."
and made you bleed, she's paid you-through the nose." One was of clay, the other iron or copper,
TEODORO: Maybe she's not too bad a dog; she bites, and both a river swept away downhill.
then she's all over you. It carried them apart, but then the clay one
TRISTAN: Well, I suspect wouldn't keep company with the copper one,
these wild extremes will end up like that story for fear it might be broken; well, I reckon
of the professor's servants." that striking notion holds for him and her.
TEODORO: Hope you're right! One's clay, one's metal; if they come too close
. it's clear to me there has to be a breakage.
FEDERICO: Her pride and passion took me by surprise,
and what I saw, perhaps I saw amiss;
but when you see the fancy clothes he's sporting,
his horses and attendants, what are they
if not new wings to fly with? No, Teodoro
couldn't acquire all that without good reason.
90· LOPE DE VEGA
RICARDO: Before there's talk of this all over Naples,
before your family reputation suffers,
whether it's true or not, he'll have to die.
FEDERICO: It's only right and proper we should kill him,
even if she knows why; can it be done?
RICARDO: Of COurse it can; there's plenty of men in Naples
who make their living trading blood for gold.
We only need to find some desperado
and he'll dispatch him for us.
FEDERICO: Then I beg you
let's do so, with dispatch.
RICARDO: This very day
his impudence shall have its just reward.
FEDERICO: Aren't those the sort of men you mean?
RICARDO: I'm sure.
FEDERICO: Then Heaven itself, no doubt, is so affronted,
it means to assist your virtuous intention.
(The Lackeys FURIa, ANTONELO and LTRANO enter,
with TRISTAN, in a new outfit)
FURIa: You ought to stand a round of wine, to christen
that splendid suit of clothes you've just been given.
ANTONELO: Good old Tristan! It's only right, you know!
"TRISTAN: I'm only too delighted, gentlemen.
LTRANO: It's really rather fine.
TRISTAN: Well, yes, but this
is only frills and fripperies by contrast
with what I should get in my new position.
If Fortune doesn't queer the pitch,IOO I'll be
the secretary's secretary-see?
LTRANO: She's doing your master very proud, the countess.
TRISTAN: He's like her deputy, her right-hand man,
the gateway to her favour.
ANTONELO: Let's forget
favours and fortunes now, and have that drink.
FURIa: This tavernacLe, 101 I suspect, has good
Lachryma Christi, and some mighty malmsey.
TRISTAN: Let's try some Greek wine.!" I've a mind to speak
a spot of Greek, and if you want to think
you're talking Greek, you only need to drink.
IlI.i 1II.i THE DOG IN THE MANGER 91
RICARDO: That dark-haired fellow with the pale complexion
appears to be the fiercest; all the rest
defer to him as if he were their leader.
Celio!
CELIO: My lord?
RICARDO: You see those gentlemen?
Just call the pale one over.
CELIO: If you please, sir,
my lord the marquis there, before you enter
this holy hermitage, would like a word.
TRISTAN: Comrades, that princeling yonder seeks a parley.
I can't decline to hear what he desires.
Go in and sample half-a-dozen casks,
and have them serve some portions of formaggio, 103
while I enquire what may be his highness' pleasure,
ANTONELO: Well, get it over quickly.
TRISTAN: I shall fly!
What is it you would have of me, your lordship?
RICARDO: Count Federico here and I, impressed
to see you thronged by such a valiant crew,
are moved to ask if you'd be man enough
to kill a man.
TRISTAN: These are milady's suitors,
for goodness' sake, and up to something too;
I'd better play along.
FEDERICO: Have you no answer?
TRISTAN: I was just wondering if your lordship meant
to mock the way we live; for by the name
of Him on high who measures all Our might
there's not a swordsman in the whole of Naples
who doesn't tremble at my very name!
You've heard of Hector? Well, there is no Hector
wherever my undaunted arm holds sway.
He was Troy's hero, I'm all Italy's.
FEDERICO: Marquis, this is the very man we need.
In both our names I swear we mean no mockery;
if you're as bold as such a name betokens,
and want to kill a man, just quote your price.
TRISTAN: Two hundred ducats, for the devil himself.
RICARDO: Then make it three, and do the deed tonight.
 I11.i ITI.i THE DOG IN THE MANGER
92 LOPE DE VEGA 93

TRISTAN: I only need his name, and an advance. (TEODORO enters)

RICARDO: D'you know Diana, Countess of Belflor?
TRISTAN: I've friends inside her house.
RICARDO: And will you kill
one of her servants?
TRISTAN: All, both male and female;
and even the Frisian nags that pull her coach.!"
RICARDO: The one you are to kill, then, is Teodoro.
TRISTAN: Now that, my lords, is rather a different matter.
Teodoro, I know, won't venture out at night,
aware, perhaps, that he's offended you.
But lately I've been asked to be his servant;
let me agree, and one night soon I promise
I'll slip my master a pair of deadly thrusts
with which the wretch in pace requiescat
and I'll escape scot-free and unsuspected.
Well, what d'you think?
FEDERICO: We'd never find in Naples
another man so certain to destroy him.
Become his servant, catch him unawares
some day and strike, and then come back to us.
TRISTAN: I need a hundred ducats right away.
RICARDO: There's fifty in this purse, and when I see
you've wormed your way into Diana's house,
you'll have your hundred-yes, and lashings more.
TRISTAN: I'd really rather do without the lashings! 105
But now I'll take my leave of both your lordships;
my comrades are awaiting me, there's Horsemint,
there's Breachwall, Ironhand, Pitcher, Fright-the-Devil,
and I'd prefer them not to be suspicious.
RICARDO: You're very wise. Goodbye.
FEDERICO: What great good fortune!
RICARDO: Teodoro is as good as dead already.
FEDERICO: That rascal really looks a fearful fellow!
(FEDERICO, RICARDO and CELIO exit)
TRISTAN: I ought to warn Teodoro straight away;
my friends and my Greek wine will have to wait.
. , s not too far f rom here,.106
I'll hurry home, It
but wait, I think I see Teodoro now!
Where are you going, sir?
TEODORO: I wish I knew
what it is bears me on or where I'm bound.
Alone, adrift, I follow that fond fancy
which bids me dare to gaze upon the sun.
Just yesterday we spoke so long together;
today Diana seemed so out of love,
so strange, you'd swear she scarcely knew my name,
as if she meant to make Marcela mock me.
TRISTAN: Come to the house, it's vital to us both
we're not seen here together.
TEODORO: How d'you mean?
TRISTAN: I'll tell you as we go how I propose
to circumvent the plots against your life.
TEODORO: My life! But what on earth ... ?
TRISTAN: Just lower your voice,
and hear what hopes of remedy you have.
Ricardo and the count just spoke to me,
and signed me up to settle you for good.
TEODORO: They want to kill me?
TRISTAN: On the evidence
of certain blows, they guess milady loves you,
and thinking me one of those desperadoes
who volunteer to carry out such killings,
they've offered me two hundred for your life
and sealed the deal with an advance of fifty.
I said a friend was asking me to serve you,
and said I would, to have more chance to kill you,
in point of fact proposing to protect you.
TEODORO: I would to God some man would end my life,
and so release me from this living death!
TRISTAN: You're that despairing?
TEODORO: Shouldn't I be seared
by such sweet anguish? You must know, Tristan,
that if Diana were to find some pretext,
any excuse at all, she'd marry me.
She's fearful for her honour; when her passion
is most inflamed, she cools and turns against me. ;:
TRISTAN: And if I founrl a remedy, what then? ·,1
94 LOPE DE VEGA UI.i IlI.i THE DOG IN THE MANGER 95

TEODORO: i'd say you had the guile of Ulysses. he sees death near and welcomes his destruction.
TRISTAN: If I'd the wit to bring you, to the house, I have only one regret: that now I find
a noble father, so you'd be the equal I must remove my sorrow from its source.
of any countess, wouldn't that resolve it? DIANA: Remove, but why?
TEODORO: No doubt. TEODORO: They mean to murder me.
:TRISTAN: Well, listen. He's an old man now, DIANA: No doubt they do.
but twenty years ago Count Ludovico TEODORO: They must be envious then
sent off a son-same name as yours-to Malta; of what at first was joy but now is anguish.
his uncle was Grand Master at the time. And so I ask your leave to leave for Spain.
This son was captured, though, by Moorish pirates DIANA: That is a noble act, a wise decision
and never heard of since, alive or dead. which will remove the risk to both, and bring
So you must be the son, and he your father, tears to my eyes but honour to my house;
and I'll arrange it all. for since that day I struck you, Federico
TEODORO: Tristan, be careful; has viewed me with suspicion and has sought
your ingenuity and your inventions to have me turn you out. Yes, go to Spain;
might cost us both our honour and our lives. I'll tell them you're to have six thousand ducats.
TRISTAN: Ah, we're at home. Goodbye. I guarantee TEODORO: Your enemies will be silenced if I go.
by noon tomorrow she'll be yours. You'll see! I kiss your feet.
(TRISTAN exits) DIANA: Teodoro, stop, no more.
Please, leave me; I'm a woman, after all.
TEODORO: For love's unending tortures I intend TEODORO: She's crying, I know, and yet ... what can I do?
.to find a very different cure, for Venus DIANA: . You're leaving then, Teodoro?
knows all too well, no power on earth can end TEODORO: Yes, milady.
her hold on us so well as earth between US. 107 DIANA: But wait ... no, go .... no, listen ....
If I put earth between us-go away- TEODORO: Is there something?
I too may cool the ardour of desire, DIANA: No, nothing, go....
for flaming thunderbolts can never say TEODORO: I'm going.
they pierce the earth; the earth contains their fire. DIANA: I'm so confused.
And many have learned, who needed to deny
Can any torture tear the soul like love?
their love, as I do now, that lovers must Have you not gone?
put earth between, to let its memory die, TEODORO: I'm leaving now, milady.
and so turn earth to earth, and dust to dust;
the fact their love had died was only seen (TEODORO exits)
when once they'd buried it with earth between. DIANA: He's left, and I am left, bereft. Oh, Honour,
(The Countess enters) God curse you, foolish fiction that you are,
so alien to our innermost desires!
DIANA: Have you recovered from your melancholia?
What fool invented you? Yet you're not foolish;
TEODORO: I take delight in it, savour my sorrow,
you save us from so many acts of folly.
seek no recovery from such a sadness,
pine only at the prospect of a cure. (TEODORO enters.)
Happy is he whose sufferings are so sweet; TEODORO: I'm here once more to ask, have I your leave
96 LOPE DE VEGA
to go today?
DIANA: I cannot say, Teodoro,
and you, since you've returned, seem not to know
I grieve to see you.
TEODORO: Madam, I've returned
to seek myself, since I am nowhere else
and need you to release me to myself.
DIANA: Don't ask me to release you, if you mean
to come again to seek yourself. Now go;
my love is locked in combat with my honour,
and you may make me stumble. Go, Teodoro;
don't seek yourself, though well you may. I know
that though you stay, you take me with you too.
TEODORO: God bless your ladyship.
DIANA: My ladyship?
My ladyship be damned, it's being a lady
prevents my being his whom I desire. lOS
(TEODORO exits)
His was the light which lit these eyes of mine;
yet let them grieve; those who see wrong, weep long. 109
yes, now my eyes must pay the penalty
for having looked so low; the fault's not mine.
They shouldn't weep, though, tears are too consoling:
yet let them grieve; those who see wrong, weep long.
Of course they'll claim they've a complete excuse:
the sun, they'll say, sees mud, and isn't stained.
It isn't proper, then, that they should weep;
yet let them grieve; those who see wrong, weep long.
(MARCELA enters)
MARCELA: Emboldened by my years of faithful service,
I humbly beg you to reward them, madam;
an opportunity presents itself
by which you may both ease my situation
and have nie quit your sight, if I've upset you .:
DIANA: What opportunity, Marcela? Tell me.
MARCELA: They say Teodoro, fearing he's in danger,
is leaving soon for Spain; if we were married,
and I went with him, you'd not need to see me,
and all my troubles would be cured as well.
JII.i I1I.i THE DOG IN THE MANGER 97
DIANA: Would he be willing?
MARCELA: How could I put forward
such a request, if I weren't sure he would?
DIANA: You've talked to him?
MARCELA: He's talked to me, and asked me.
DIANA: Have I deserved all this, at such a moment?
MARCELA: Teodoro and I have worked it out together,
and which would be the easiest way to go.
DIANA: Now, Honour, in your foolishness, forgive me;
Love must lose all control. And yet it need not;
no, this disease at least is easily cured.
MARCELA: Can't you decide?
DIANA: I couldn't do without you.
What you suggest, Marcela, would offend
my love for you, and Fabio's, who adores you.
You're marrying him, so let Teodoro go.
MARCELA: But I hate Fabio, and adore Teodoro..
DIANA: What a temptation to betray my feelings;
be still, my foolish heart. I ten you, Fabio
will suit you better.
MARCELA: But ....
DIANA: Don't answer back.
(The Countess exits)
MARCELA: Why set my heart on what can never be,
opposing so much might with vain persistence,
when jealousy with power, it's plain to see,
will stop at nothing if it meets resistance?
Retrace your steps, my feet, lest we be lost;
you hurry me too quickly to my doom,
for star-crossed lovers are like trees that frost
blights in the fullest beauty of their bloom.
The brightness of that bloom was a delight
that her vindictive power has now brought low;
for many a love another love will blight,
withering the hopes that had begun to grow.
What matter then the beauty of the flower,
if flower and fruit are blighted in an hour?
98 LOPE DE VEGA
(The old Count LUDOVICO enters, with CAMILO)
CAMILO: You need an heir, so there's no other answer.
LUDOVICO: . That may be an excuse for marrying late,
but when you're my age, every year you've lived
seems like an enemy to peace of mind.
So caution sits in judgement on the matter
and finds it to be folly; after all,
I might not get an heir, and still be married.
And anyway, an old man and a woman
are like an elm encircled by an ivy;
each may enfold the other in its embraces,
its eager arms, but while she thrives, he shrivels.'!"
Even to talk of marriage, too, Camilo,
recalls my tragedy and renews my torment;
it's twenty years now since I lost Teodoro,
and still each day I weep and wait and cherish
the illusion that he may some day return.
(A page enters)
PAGE: Your lordship, there's a merchant here from Greece
asking to see you.
LUDOVICO: TeB him he may enter.
(TRISTAN enters, comically attired as an Armenian, in a
turban, accompanied by FURIO in another)
TRISTAN: I kiss your hands, and pray the heavens above us
may by their holy might be pleased to grant you
that boon you most desire.
LUDOVICO: You're very welcome;
but what has brought you to this distant land?
TRISTAN: I sailed to Cyprus from Constantinople,
and thence to Venice, in a ship well laden
with Persian cloths and carpets of great price.
RecalIing, though, a story which has caused me
no mean concern, and keen to visit Naples,
I left my minions there, unloading fabrics,
and as you see have journeyed here myself
to gaze upon this fair and mighty city.
LUDOVICO: It is a mighty city, and a fair one.
--- ------
III.ii III.ii THE DOG IN THE MANGER 99
TRISTAN: It is indeed. My father, sir, like me,
was once a Grecian merchant, and the trade
he found paid best was buying and selIing slaves;
and so it chanced that in Azteclias market
he bought a boy, the fairest child that nature
can ever have created, to display
what mighty power Heaven lent it here on earth.
The lad was being traded by some Turks,
along with other folk of good condition
who, travelling on a vessel bound for Malta,
were captured by a Turkish pasha's galley
at Chafalonia. III
LUDOVICO: How my heart misgives me!
TRISTAN: My father took a fancy to the youngster,
bought him, and took him with him to Armenia,
and reared him with my sister and myself.
LUDOVICO: Forbear, my friend, you tear my very soul!
TRISTAN: Hook, line and sinkerl!"
LUDOVICO: Did the young lad say
what was his name?
TRISTAN: He said "Teodoro."
LUDOVICO: Truth rings so true! I only need to hear you,
and tears begin to water these grey hairs!
TRISTAN: This alI too handsome youth, then, and my sister
Serpalitonia, being brought up together,
which breeds familiarity and fondness,
were bound by bonds of love from infancy;
and when they were sixteen, and father absent,
their passion took its course, with the result
that the result for her was growing obvious.
Alarmed by this, Teodoro disappeared,
leaving Serpalitonia near her time.
Catiborratos-that's my father's name-
was more upset by young Teodoro's leaving
than by the thing he'd done, and died of grief,
and thereupon we had the babe baptised,
for after all our region of Armenia
is Christian too, though of a different faith.
We called the pretty child Terimaconio
and reared him in the city of Tepecas,
100 LOPE DE VEGA lII.ii I1I.ii THE DOG IN THE MANGER 101
and there he lives today, a handsome youngster. years of new joy to all your years of sorrow.
So, when I came to see the sights of Naples, LUDOVICO: My friend, if you desire to go with me,
consulting notes I'd brought along, with details my happiness will be the more assured;
about Teodoro, I made a few. enquiries; if you prefer to rest, await me here.
and then a Grecian slave-girl, where I'm lodging, My house and goods are all at your disposal,
said: "Maybe that's Count Ludovico's son." poor payment for such news; I cannot stay.
That was my inspiration; I decided TRISTAN: I've left some diamonds that I brought here with me,
to come and speak to you. But by mistake not far away. I shall return when you do.
I went instead to a house I later learned So, let us take our leave now, Mercaponios.
belongs to a certain Countess of Belflor, FURIO: Let's go.
and there the very man I spoke to first. ... TRISTAN: An ideal diddle.
LUDOVICO: My heart's stopped beating. FURIO: A doddle .
TRISTAN: . . . proved to be Teodoro. TRISTAN: Skedaddlel'P
LUDOVICO: Teodoro? CAMILO: What a strange language!
TRISTAN: He'd have run away, but couldn't. LUDOVICO: Come with me, Camilo.
I wasn't sure, which isn't so surprising;
(The Count and CAMILO exit)
he has a beard these days, which makes a difference.
TRISTAN: Well, are they out of sight?
I followed him and grabbed him, though, and then,
FURIO:
very ashamed, he spoke to me, and told me The old man's flying,
I mustn't tell the household who he was; not waiting for his coach or his attendants.
TRISTAN: I wonder, though; suppose it all were true,
his having been a slave might count against him.
"But how can having been a slave disgrace you," and our Teodoro really were the lost one?
FURIO: Just fancy, if a lie as big as that
said I, "if I've discovered you're the son
of someone here in Naples, and a noble?" in fact bore some relation to the truth!
TRISTAN: Here, take these Moorish night shirts.!" I must change
He said that was ridiculous, but I
came here to you, to see if your tale tallied before I'm seen by someone here who knows me.
FURIO: Get it off, quickly, then.
with what you've heard of mine, and to beseech you,
TRISTAN: Who would have thought
if my Teodoro really is your son,
to have consideration for your grandson, a father's love could be so strong?
FURIO:
or let my sister bring him here to Naples, I'll meet you.
TRISTAN: Wait for me, Furio, at the old Elm tavern.
not seeking marriage-though she's more than worthy­
but rather so that young Terimaconio
FURIO: I'm off then.
may come to know so venerable a grandsire. (FURIO exits)
LUDOVICO: Come to my arms! Receive a father's blessing TRISTAN: Well, what's ready cash compared
a thousandfold! My soul and all its powers to a ready wit? Now let's untuck my cloak;
divine by their delight your story's true! I wrapped it round like a truncated cassock,
My heart's desire, my long-lost son returned so if I needed to, I'd have less problem
to bring such bliss, after such years of yearning! leaving that great Greek tunic thing of mine, lIS
Camilo, tell me, should I go and greet him? and my Armenian turban, in some doorway.
CAMILO: Why hesitate? Fly to his arms, and add
(RICARDO and FEDERICO enter)
102 LOPE DE VEGA III.ii nun THE DOG IN THE MANGER 103

FEDERICO: What have we here? The daring desperado TRISTAN: Perhaps I may be; only time will tell.
who was so certain he could kill Teodoro! FEDERICO: Fine fellow, that.
RICARDO: Is this, sir, pray, how what was glibly promised RICARDO: Sharp-witted and inventive.
is brought to pass by people who profess FEDERICO: He'll kill Teodoro splendidly.
to prize their public name and reputation? RICARDO: Superbly.
TRISTAN: My lord....
FEDERICO: Do you imagine you can treat (CELlO enters)
nobles like us as if we were your own sort? CELlO: How very strange! How utterly fantastic!
TRISTAN: I shouldn't be condemned without a hearing. FEDERICO: Celio, what's this? Where are you off to? Stop!
I've taken service with that wretch Teodoro, CELlO: It's quite a piece of news, and quite a setback
and die he shall by this blood-boltered hand; for both of you. D'you see that crowd of people
but publicly to stain my sword with him all rushing round to Ludovico's place?
might sully your good name. Your lordships, prudence RICARDO: Why, has he died?
is Heaven's greatest gift, and was esteemed CELlO: Just hear me out, I'll tell you.
among the ancients as a special virtue. They're going to congratulate the count
You can regard the wretch as dead already. on having found a long-lost son of his.
By day he's melancholic, and by night, RICARDO: So, good for him; what's that to do with us?
locked in his room alone; some morbid fancy CELlO: Won't it affect your private plans concerning
must have possessed his mind. Leave it to me; Countess Diana, that it seems Teodoro
one steely thrust shall soon cut short his breath. her servant is Count Ludovico's son?
Be less precipitate, for well I know FEDERICO: It cuts me to the quick.
the hour at which to strike the fatal blow. RICARDO: . The old count's son?
FEDERICO: He's right, I think, Ricardo; since he's entered But how's that come to light?
Teodoro's service, that's a good beginning. CELlO: It's quite a story,
He'll kill him, have no doubt. and different every time it's told; you'd never
RICARDO: I'm sure he will; have memory or time enough to follow.
he might as well be dead! FEDERICO: Whoever saw so dreadful a disaster?
FEDERICO: Don't raise your voice. RICARDO: My hopes of joy are all reduced to sorrow.
TRISTAN: Meanwhile, perhaps your lordships could provide me FEDERICO: I mean to know what's happened.
with fifty ducats? If I bought a horse, RICARDO: I'll come too.
I'd make my getaway that very day. CELlO: You'll soon find out it's absolutely true!
RICARDO: I have them here, so take them and be certain, (They exit)
if you're successful in this enterprise,
payment's the least you can expect.
TRISTAN: I'm proud (TEODORO enters, dressed for travelling, with MARCELA)
to risk my life to serve such worthy masters.
MARCELA: You're leaving, then, Teodoro?
And so farewell; Diana's balconies
are close at hand. I'd rather not be seen TEODORO: Yes, I'm leaving,
conversing with your lordships. and you're the reason. No good ever came
FEDERICO: Very shrewd. from facing such unequal competition.
MARCELA: What an excuse! You're just as false as ever!
 J1J.iii JlJ.iii THE DOG IN THE MANGER 105
104 LOPE DE VEGA

You dropped me when you thought to love Diana, DIANA: You're leaving me, Teodoro, and I love you.
and now your foolish hopes have come to nothing TEODORO: You're cruel.
you're only leaving to forget your failure. DIANA: I'm what I am; what can I do?
Diana, me?
TEODORO: You're crying?
TEODORO:
You can't deny, Teodoro, DIANA: No, there's something in my eye.
MARCELA:
the insane desire that's doomed you to disaster, TEODORO: Love, could it be?
DIANA: It must be, but it's been there
and made you both too timid and too bold;
too bold because your baseness aims too high; for some long time, and now it must come out.
timid, because you rightly fear she'll keep TEODORO: I leave, my lady, but I leave my heart;118
the self-respect her noble rank requires. yet if I leave it at your feet I merely
Honour and love can never be conjoined; do proper reverence to your heavenly beauty.
too many snow-capped mountains stand between. I'm yours; command me.
DIANA: Oh, what misery!
I feel my passion still, but feel avenged,
and therefore shall forget, for that's love's way. TEODORO: I leave, my lady, but I leave my heart.
If you remember me, just call to mind DIANA: You're crying?
TEODORO: No, there's something in my eye.
that I no longer care, and then you'll want me.
'Twas ever thus; thinking he's been forgotten DIANA: My cruelty, maybe?
116 TEODORO: Yes, it must be that.
will always make a lover love again.
TEODORO: What stuff and nonsense, when you're marrying Fabio! DIANA: One of your trunks, you'll find, contains a host
MARCELA: You're forcing me to marry him out of vengeance, of foolish, fond momentoes; please forgive me, .
to find some way to spite you for your scorn. I couldn't help myself; and don't forget,
if you should open it, to tell yourself,
(FABIO enters)
as if they were the spoils of some proud conquest:
FABIO: You're wise, Marcela, since Teodoro's leaving "These were Diana's, and the tears were too."
so very soon, to feast your eyes on him. ANARDA: They're both beside themselves.
TEODORO: Your jealousy's misplaced, when I'm displacing. DOROTEA: How hard it is
FABIO: You're really going? to keep love hidden.
TEODORO: Can't you see? ANARDA: Wouldn't it be better
FABIO: My lady! for him to stay? Look, now they're holding hands
(The Countess enters, with DOROTEA and ANARDA) and offering tokens.
DOROTEA: I say she's a real
DIANA: SO ready to be off, Teodoro, already?
I only wish my feet had wings, milady, dog in the manger.
TEODORO:
ANARDA: Yes, and who'd have thought
not merely spurs.'!'
Hello there! How's that clothing? she'd wait so long to take his hand in hers?
DIANA:
It's all prepared and put together, madam.
DOROTEA: She ought to eat, or else let others eat!
ANARDA:
FABIO: He's really going then? (Count LUDOVICO enters, with CAMILO)
MARCELA: And you're still jealous.
DIANA: A word aside here. LUDOVICO: My dear Diana, such delightful tidings
TEODORO: Madam, at your service. surely permit a man as old as I
(The two of them, aside) to visit you like this, quite unannounced.
 106 LOPE DE VEGA I1I.iii I1I.iii THE DOG IN THE MANGER 107
DIANA:
How clearly Nature's written in your face
LUDOVICO:
your true nobility of birth and breeding!
Let's go, come straight away, and take
instant possession of my house and fortune.
Come now and see those gates which proudly bear
. D·IANA:
the noblest scutcheons of this noble kingdom .
TEODORO: My lord, I was about to leave for Spain,
LUDOVICO:
and so....
LUDOVICO: For Spain? Spain's here, in this embrace.
DIANA: I beg your lordship, leave Teodoro here.
Let him be more composed, more fitly dressed
DIANA:
to go to be acknowledged as your son.
LUDOVICO:
I wouldn't wish him now to leave my house
with such a vulgar hubbub in the streets.
DIANA:
LUDOVICO: You speak as wisely as befits your person.
LUDOVICO:
I'm sad to leave him for a single moment,
but lest there be more outcry I shall go.
I only ask your ladyship to promise
DIANA: .
night shalI not fall before I see my treasure.
LUDOVICO:
DIANA: I give my word.
DIANA:
LUDOVICO: Farewell, my dear Teodoro.
LUDOVICO:
TEODORO: I kiss your feet in reverence.
TEODORO:
LUDOVICO: Camilo,
DIANA:
death would be welcome now.
LUDOVICO:
CAMILO: And he's so handsome,
TEODORO:
so elegant a youth!
LUDOVICO:
LUDOVICO: I dare not ponder
too much on so much joy, or I'II go mad!
DIANA:
ANARDA: (The Count exits and all the servants throng around TEODORO)
FABIO: Give all of us your hands to kiss, milord.
TEODORO:
ANARDA: Show us that noble condescension, sir.
LUDOVICO: DOROTEA: Show us your favour.
MARCELA: Lords who're easy-going
win everybody's hearts; you should embrace us.
TEODORO: DIANA: Stand back, give way to me, don't talk such nonsense.
LUDOVICO: May it please your lordship, now give me your hands.
TEODORO: No, rather, I should kiss your feet, for now
you're all the more my lady.119
DIANA: Clear the room;
 -_._----. "--~----.._ - - - - - - -- -------~-. -- ..­

108 LOPE DE VEGA lII.iii nun THE DOG IN THE MANGER 109

leave us a little while alone together. for any servant to address his mistress?
MARCELA: Well, Fabio, what d'you say to that? TEODORO: The rules are different now, and I'm the master.
FABIO: I'm reeling! DIANA: You're not to make me jealous of Marcela,
DOROTEA: What do you think? though she may well not like how things have changed.
ANARDA: 1 think my mistress won't be TEODORO: We masters, madam, are not in the habit
a dog in the manger long! of lowering ourselves to love mere servants.
DOROTEA: You think she'll eat? DIANA: Be very sure you mean that.
ANARDA: Isn't it obvious? TEODORO: That's insulting.
DOROTEA: Then I hope she bursts! DIANA: Who am I that insults you then?
TEODORO: My wife. (He exits)
(The servants exit) DIANA: I ask no more. Oh Fortune, stay your wheel.
DIANA: Not going to Spain then? Like him, 1 say: you have no more to give.
TEODORO: I? (FEDERICO and RICARDO enter)
DIANA: No longer saying:
RICARDO: Amid all this excitement and elation,
"I leave, my lady, but I leave my heart?"
will you not share the tidings with your friends?
TEODORO: When Fortune favours me, you merely mock me?
DIANA: As freely as your lordships may desire.
DIANA: Be more excited, damn you!
FEDERICO: We would desire to know then if it's true
TEODORO: Let's be gracious;
you have so great a noble as your servant.
and treat each other now on equal terms,
DIANA: 1 thought you might desire to know, my lords,
as nobles do, since both are noble now.
-and now 1 must request your leave to leave you­
DIANA: It seems to me you've changed.
Teodoro is a count, and is my husband.
TEODORO: It seems to me
you love me less; you're sorry I'm your equal, (The Countess exits)
and not your servant still; it's very usual RICARDO: What do you think of that?
for Love to like the loved one to be lowlier. FEDERICO: It drives me frantic.
DIANA: You're wrong, you'll find, for now I'll make you mine; RICARDO: If that bravo had only murdered him!
I'll marry you tonight.
TEODORO: Oh Fortune, stay (TRISTAN enters)
your spinning wheel, you have no more to give. FEDERICO: Look, here he comes.
DIANA: No woman in the world, I'm sure of it, TRISTAN: It's working like a charm.
could count herself more fortunate than 1 am. A fine thing, when it seems a lackey's wit
So go and dress. can turn the whole of Naples topsy-turvy!
TEODORO: I'll go to see the estate RICARDO: Stop there, Tristan, if that's the name they call you.
today has made me heir to, and the father TRISTAN: The one I'm mostly known by is "The Killer."
I've just acquired, though God knows how or why. FEDERICO: And you've lived up to it!
DIANA: Farewell, my lord the count. TRISTAN: 1 should have done so,
TEODORO: Farewell, my countess. but then today our corpse became a count.
DIANA: Listen. RICARDO: What does it matter?
TEODORO: What? TRISTAN: When we struck our bargain
DIANA: "What?" Is that a proper way at just three hundred ducats, 1 was only
110 LOPE DE VEGA III.iii III.iii THE DOG IN THE MANGER III
to kill a certain servant, called Teodoro; is have my head.
but Count Teodoro's different altogether. TRISTAN: So now you've got cold feet!
It comes much dearer to dispatch a count TEODORO: You're such a demon!
than half-a-dozen servants, who're so often TRISTAN: Let it take its course,
as good as dead already, some from hunger, and see how things turn out.
others from hope, and not a few from envy. TEODORO: Here comes the countess.
FEDERICO: Kill him tonight, and charge what price you like! TRISTAN: She won't see me; I'm going into hiding.!"
TRISTAN: A thousand ducats, then?
RICARDO: I give my word. (The Countess enters)
TRISTAN: I'll need some guarantee.
DIANA: Not gone to see your father yet, Teodoro?
RICARDO: Here, take this chain.
TEODORO: A heavy sadness stays my steps; indeed
TRISTAN: You'd best go count the money.
I must desire your leave again to go
FEDERICO: I'll go now
to Spain as I proposed.
and fetch it here. DIANA: No doubt Marcela
TRISTAN: And I'll go now and kill him.
is calling you to' arms; how very proper!
But listen!
TEODORO: Marcela? Can you think ... ?
RICARDO: Well, what else?
DIANA: Then what's the matter?
TRISTAN: Be silent. Ssssssh!
TEODORO: Nothing that I should say, or you should hear.
(RICARDO and FEDERICO exit. TEODORO enters) DIANA: TelI me, Teodoro, never mind how much
it may offend my honour; telI me truly.
TEODORO: I saw you talking to that murderous pair TEODORO: Tristan, to whom Deceit should set up statues,
from over here. whom Mischief might immortalise in verse,
TRISTAN: They're quite the biggest fools whom Daedalus, who made the Cretan maze
in all this city. They've just given me might well acknowledge as the greater master.!"
this chain, and promised' me a thousand ducats seeing my love and feeling my frustration,
to kill you now. and knowing of Ludovico's long-lost son,
TEODORO: What is this scheme of yours? invented this fantastic fabrication;
I don't know what to think. in truth I'm nobody.!" I know no father
TRISTAN: I wish you'd heard me beyond my wits, my schooling and my pen.
talking in Greek, Teodoro; you'd have loved it, The count thinks I'm his son, and if we married
and given me far more than those two idiots. I could have happiness and fame and fortune;
There's nothing to this Greek-speak, I can telI you. and yet my natural nobility
It's only gabbing after all, but lord, will not allow me to abuse your trust.
the names were funny though: Catiborratos, I am by nature one who tells the truth:
Azteclias, and Xipatos, and Atecas, and therefore once again I ask your leave
Serpalitonia and Filimoclia! to go to Spain. I can't and won't betray
It must be Greek, I'm sure it's Greek to me;120 your beauty and your breeding and your love.
but no-one knows, so nobody can tell. DIANA: You've been both very shrewd and very stupid;
TEODORO: The more I think of it, the worse I worry. shrewd to have made so candid a confession
If this comes out, the least they'lI do to me and shown me your nobility of mind,
112 LOPE DE VEGA lIl.iii JII.iii THE DOG IN THE MANGER 113

stupid to have supposed I'd be so stupid
as not to marry you, since now I've found
the pretext which was all that I required
to disregard your lack of noble birth;
for happiness depends, not on high rank,
but on the harmony of heart with heart.
I mean to marry you; and so Tristan
may not betray our secret, when he's sleeping
I'll have them tip his body down that well.
(TRISTAN, behind the curtain)
Oh no you don't!
DIANA: Who's that?
TRISTAN: Who's that? Tristan,
protesting at the worst ingratitude
your fickle sex was ever guilty of!
I've been your cat's-paw, though I wish I hadn't,
and would you put poor pussy down the well?124
DIANA: You mean you heard?
TRISTAN; You won't catch me.
DIANA: Come back.
TRISTAN: Come back?
DIANA: Come back. Your wit has won the day.
I give my word you'll find no firmer friend;
but mind you keep this scheme of yours a secret.
TRISTAN: Why shouldn't I, when I've as much to lose?
TEODORO: But listen, what's that crowd and all that shouting?
(Count LUDOVICO enters, with FEDERICO, RICARDO, CAMILO,
FABIO, ANARDA, DOROTEA and MARCELA)
I sought a son here, find a son and daughter!
FEDERICO: Ricardo, come, congratulate my cousin.
RICARDO: My lords, I must congratulate Teodoro
that he still lives, for jealousy provoked me
to give this cowardly rogue a thousand ducats
to kill his lordship, let alone this chain.
Arrest him, as a trickster and a thief!
TEODORO: Not so, no man who honourably defends
his lord and master can be cal\ed a thief.
RICARDO: Why, who then was this devious desperado?
TEODORO: My lackey; and to give him some reward
for this (and certain other, secret favours),
providing that her ladyship agrees
-since she herself has wed Marcela and Fabio­
I mean to marry him to Dorotea.
RICARDO: I'l\ pay one dowry.
FEDERICO: I shall pay the other.
LUDOVICO: It falls to me, then, to endow the countess
with both my boy and all my worldly goods.
TEODORO: So, with your leave, we end our famous play.
But let The Dog in the Manger have her day­
as you yourselves are noble, sirs, I pray,
please play the game; don't give the game away!

RICARDO: We're eager to accompany your son.

FEDERICO: All Naples is agog to welcome him.
LUDOVICO: Teodoro, if Diana will release you,
a carriage waits for you without, surrounded
by al\ the city's gentlefolk, on horseback.
After so many years so far from home,
come now and see the house where you were born.
DIANA: Before he leaves this house and goes to that,
I'd have you know, my lord, that I'm his wife.
LUDOVICO: If Fortune's wayward wheel was ever fixed
by a golden nail, I pray it may be nowl!"

Notes to the Text
1 Possibly the best translation for Hola, at this time the characteristic ex­
clamation with which to cal1 the attention of inferiors like servants.
2 It is a mark of the stress on noble rank in this play that the title Sehoria
("ladyship" or "lordship") appears in· it 35 times, far more than in any
other of a hundred by Lope examined by Nadine Ly, "Note sur I'emploi
du tratamiento Sefioria dans Ie theatre de Lope de Vega," Hommage des
hispanistes francais a Noel Salomon (Barcelona: Laia, 1979), 553-61.
3 In Lope's text, Diana contrasts Fabio's phlegm with her own choler. Lope
may mean only anger, but may be suggesting that at moments like this (of
which there wil1 be many) she is characterised by the hot and dry choleric
humour; Perro, 36. He asserted in La esclava de su hijo, AcN 2, 165-6,
the contemporary view that "men love according to their humour."
4 St. Elmo's fire, the light seen playing about the masts of ships after a
storm, is often referred to by Lope's characters, as a reproach to others
who appear only after a danger has passed.
5 In every edition of the play, other than the first and mine, these two
lines are attributed to Otavio, surely in error. It seems obvious that he
does not inanely repeat himself, but that Diana, very much in character,
sarcastical1y mimics him.
6 In Lope's text, Fabio says that he left like a gavilan, a "sparrow-hawk" (or
in rogues' slang, a "thief'); this is the' first of the play's many reference
to winged creatures.
7 Literally, Diana compares her male servants to duenas, the ladies (usual1y
widows) of uncertain age who often acted as chaperones and were the
butt of much satire.
S One might alternatively render gallina ("hen"; another winged creature)
as "chicken."
9 One of the country seats of the dukedom of Ferrara was at Belfiore.
But Belflor was a "Ruritanian" place-name, sited variously by Lope (and
others) in Italy, France and Hungary; see W. T. McCready, "The To­
ponym Belflor in Golden-Age Literature," Revista Canadiense de Estu­
dios Hispdnicos, 6 (1981-2), 379-86.
10 Literal1y, "I'm in no mood for jokes." Queen Victoria's most celebrated
saying seems appropriate.
NOTES 115
11 Literal1y, "if you wish to have a remedy," i.e. a dowry to get married
with. The word remedio and its cognates are used no less than 25 times
in the Spanish text, no doubt because Lope was recal1ing Ovid's Remedia
amoris; I have tried mostly to translate them as "remedy" or "cure."
12 Literally, "if you were to put me in the midst of a thousand flames." Note
that Marcela speaks later of an "inquisition," and Anarda of "torture."
13 We are possibly to understand that the Countess, like the Duchess of
Amalfi, is a widow, but it seems more likely that she is a virgin, and is
referring here to her father.
14 Lope is having Diana (who calls it literally a "strange term") poke fun
at the affected use (by writers like Gongora) of trasladar ("translate" or
"transcribe").
15 Note how Lope, in one of his sparse stage-directions, stresses again the
respect her servants show for the Countess's rank.
16 Tristan's metaphors, as Teodoro recognises, are from fencing; but reparar
("parry") has also the meaning "take note" or "reflect."
17 Tristan asserts that when the lamp gave him Touchstone's dreaded "lie
direct" he retaliated at once, as the code of honour demanded; but having
used his hat rather than a sword, he affects to wonder whether honour
was satisfied.
18 Ovid, R.A. 383-412, 683-6, 715-40, urges determination and warns
against both memory and hope.
19 I cannot identify the poet, but the two lines Tristan quotes here occur also
in a lyric sung early in Lope's Antonio Roca, written before 1604. My
replacement quotation is from Henry IV, Part I, III, ii.
20 The chapines Tristan refers to were footware with thick cork soles, noto­
riously used by ladies to appear tal1er. Referred to by Hamlet (II, ii), they
were defined by Cotgrave in 1611: "choppins, a kind of high slippers for
low women." B. B. Ashcom, "By the altitude of a chopine," Homenaje a
Rodriguez-Moiiino, Vol. I (Madrid: Castalia, 1966), 17-27, quotes many
contemporary references, including seven in plays by Lope.
21 Lope often attributed such sayings to an apocryphal wit (a "sabio" or
"discreto"). But he may have been thinking of Ovid, R.A. 344: "Pars
minima est ipsa puella sui." Certainly Ovid advised one to remember the
loved one's defects, to imagine her, with nausea, stripped of her false
finery; R.A. 299-440.
22 Literally, "but if you don't intend to consider defects, I can give you
fodder (as to a beast)." Lope's triple pun on pensar ("intend," "consider,"
"give fodder") defies translation; my pun on fault is a poor replacement.
23 Ovid too claimed that he had cured himself of loving a certain girl by
remembering and exaggerating her faults; R.A. 311-22. But Tristan goes
into grotesque hyperbole .in describing his obese mistress; perhaps Lope
was satirizing Jeronima de Burgos, after their liaison had ended (see
 NOTES
116
Introduction, p. 8).
24 Lope has another triple pun here, on gracias, desgracia and gracia
("graces," "misfortune" and "grace").
25 Literally, "I am diffident without good reason"; the quotation from Mac­
beth I, vii, is translator's licence.
26 Lope constructed his deliberately mysterious sonnet to lead up to this line,
which paraphrases one in Petrarch's Canzone CV: "Intendami chi po, eli'
i' m'intend' io," which he also used as a motto for two devices (each
featuring a sphinx), in Del mal 10 menos, AcN 4, 454, and La vengadora
de las mujeres, AcN 13,639.
27 Lope constantly asserted, in his incessant references to both, that jeal­
ousy was the offspring of love (albeit its evil or bastard offspring, or its
grandchild).
28 Diana's metaphor is astonishingly outspoken in its phraseology; it may
recall "the man who fell among thieves," Luke X.30.
29 If the wit is not apocryphal, I cannot identify him; but Lope was to
attribute a similar remark to "a poet" in La Dorotea, Act II, scene 1. It
is interesting to note that Lope himself in a letter of October 1615 to his
patron the Duque de Sessa (whom he was to accompany to Burgos and
the French border for the celebration of royal marriages) asked him for
suitable clothes, "so that ... I can appear without shame where it may
be necessary for us to be together."
30 Tristan actually says Oste puto; which Autoridades quaintly explains as a
vehement interjection, often used when one handles or tastes something
very hot. Oste was a rustic word, used for instance to shoo chickens;
puto is "bugger," but probably milder here, as in the provincial use of
the English phrase "bugger off."
31 Tristan had referred to murciegalos ("bats"); when Diana repeats the word
here; she alludes to its figurative sense of "night-robbers" or "those who
make moonlight-flits" to escape creditors.
32 Diana actually refers to "a book of secrets"; she probably means one
by "Alexis of Piemont" well known to Lope. De'secreti del reverendo
Donno Alessio Piamontese (Venice: Antonio de gli Antonii, 1563), Part
II, fol. 5v, gives just such a remedy.
33 Diana further alludes to the traditional depiction of Occasio as a woman
with hair only at the front (so that one has to "catch the time by the fore­
lock"). The density of the malicious wit in these few lines is astonishing.
34 Tristan alludes literally to a smell of burning, as one did if expecting to be
charged with a crime that merited it, and fears that as a murciegalero (a
"fence," or, like murciegalo above, a "night-robber") he will be sentenced
for life to row in a galera ("galley"); hence my attempts at similar puns.
Tristan evidently exits at this point.
35 Literally, "what in Italy they call gallardta;" though the word had long
NOTES 117
been common in Castilian, and was not an Italianism.
36 Ricardo is alluding affectedly to the common notion that pearls (associ­
ated with the South Seas) were produced when oysters were fecundated
by dew.
37 This story was not invented by Lope; it appears also in a letter A un gran
privado ("To a great royal favourite") by Alonso Perez, of 24 June 1594,
as "a tale of a counsellor, Count don Luis de Silvera, and King Manuel."
38 Lope's Duchess of Amalfi tells her steward, very similarly: "An inferior'
offends if he loves ill, for if he loves well he does not offend"; B.A.E.
249,290.
39 The very similar stories of Icarus and of Phaeton were constantly paired
by poets, painters and emblematists. On the Phaeton myth in Spain
(whose main source was Ovid's Metamorphoses, II, 1-366), see espe­
cially A. Gallego Morell, El mito de Faeton en la literatura espanola
(Madrid; Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientfficas, 1961); on its
use by Lope, especially ina "twin" play close in date to ours, see Dixon,
"La villana,"
40 The first edition reads: "la condesa / es tan discreta y tan varia." Profeti, .
95, pointed out that an Italian translation by Teodoro Ameyden published
in 1642 has "La contessa e savia," and suggested that Lope might origi­
nally have written "... y tan sabia," But sabia would not have rhymed.
with contraria in the following line; thus varia must be correct. I take it
in this instance to mean "different (in rank and attitude)."
41 Lope wrote "pajarillo" ("little bird"); but he probably had in mind the
. Classical topos (e.g. Virgil's Georgics IV, 511-5) of the nightingale
robbed of its young and alone in its nest, echoed for instance in lines
324--37 of Garcilaso's First Eclogue.
42 Marc~la's comparison of Teodoro with Diana's twin the sun-god is iron­
ically prophetic.
43 Servir a senor discreto is the title of a play by Lope, datable 1610-2;
its lines 2767-7 are almost identical, and Lope often expressed the same
idea. Here of course it is highly ironical.
44 Note the comparison of the Countess. with another winged creature, high­
flying but liable to swoop down.
45 The elaborate similes with which Teodoro is made to underline this sig­
nificant piece of "business" are amusingly appropriate. His activities as
a secretary are not only shown on stage at several points in the play, and
mentioned at others, but recalled by many of its metaphors.
46 Literally, "Don't fear a prison here, and Love has a master key for Jeal­
ousy's doors."
47 Envy was described and depicted as having the tongue not of a scorpion
but of a snake; Lope is probably alluding to Metamorphoses II, 760-82,
where the abode of Envy, whose tongue is "suffused with poison," ·is said
118 NOTES
to be "hidden in a deep valley, where no sun shines and no breeze blows."
Mountains perhaps recalls also R.A. 369-70: "What is highest is Envy's
mark; winds sweep the summits, and thunderbolts sped by Jove's right
hand seek out the heights." Lope often refers, no doubt from personal
experience, to envy, and especially to the mutual enviousness of servants;
Perro, 195.
48 Lope often used but often mocked, as here, such commonplace Petrarchan
metaphors as pearls for teeth and coral for lips; shortly Teodoro will
similarly compare .Marcela's white hand with snow and lilies, and be
mocked again.
49 Note the stage-direction implicit in these lines; compare the (retrospec­
tive) directions to Diana in Teodoro's end-of-act sonnet.
50 Diana refers wittily to the pax or osculatorium, a small plaque used in the
Roman mass shortly before communion as a stylized means of conveying
the Kiss of Peace. The celebrant first kissed and then passed it to others
of the faithful, who in turn kissed and returned it.
51 Teodoro rashly suggests a strategem common in Italian novelle, like that
used in Measure for Measure.
52 The wife of Marcus Aurelius (A.D. 121-80) was a Classical instance
of a woman who loved beneath her, shamefully and with fatal results.
The Emperor. supposedly cured her passion for a gladiator by having him
killed and giving her his blood to drink. Lope, who may have known
the story from Pero Mexia's Silva de varia leeton, referred to Faustina in
many plays; Perro 196.
53 Diana's first three (similarly menacing) allusions are to archetypes of
strict Roman virtue: Lucretia killed herself after being raped by Sextus
Tarquinius; Titus Manlius Torquatus commanded his own son, though
victorious, to be executed for having disobeyed orders; Lucius Virginius
killed his own daughter to prevent her being enjoyed by Appius Claudius.
Lope often referred to all three, but often suggested, as here, that such
examples were outdated. By contrast he has Diana refer also (provoca­
tively) not only to Faustina but to other Empresses of Ancient Rome
who were notoriously libidinous: Messalina, the wife of Claudius, and
Poppaea, the mistress and wife of Nero; Perro 196-7.
54 Lope will provide a good opportunity for showing this on stage at Diana's
next entry, early in Act Two.
55 Diana literally refers to Otavio as an escudero ("squire"), usually at this
time an impoverished minor nobleman who served as attendant and chap­
eron to ladies of quality.
56 Literally, "But if they leave us when they wish, for some chance of profit
or new fancy, let them die too as men die." Lope very often repeated
the topos that women are fickle, but equally often defended them, or said
that men set the example. A sonnet spoken by Dinarda in El anzuelo
NOTES 119
de Fenisa, B.A.E. 246, 322, ends: "We women transfer our affections
without excuse; men don't, for if they are fickle, they claim it's because
we give them cause."
57 Undoubtedly Lope is mildly mocking here the opening lines of Gongora's
Soledad primera (which was circulating in manuscript by May 1613): "It
was the verdant season of the year in which Europa's feigned abductor­
the weapons of its brow a half-moon, and all the beams of its hide
the sun-, the heaven's resplendent glory, crops stars in sapphire pas­
tures ...."
58 Ricardo, comparing Diana's anticipated progress with the annual move­
ment of the sun across the firmament, likens his rival to the Bull, whose
zodiacal sign it enters in April, but himself, more flatteringly, to the king
of beasts, the Lion, which it enters in July. Horns (like those of the Bull,
the Goat and the Ram) were of course supposed to adorn the brows of
cuckolded husbands.
59 Literally, "Beauty is pride.-There is no beautiful disdain (Disdain is
never beautiful)."
60 It is characteristic of such soliloquies by Lope related to the myth of Icarus
that the speaker alternately dissociates himself from his apostrophised
thoughts and recognises that they and he are inextricably linked; Perro,
198.
61 "Building castles in the air" is a motif frequently associated with uses of
the Icarus myth in lyric verse; see Fucilla, "Etapas," 30-32.
62 Literally, Tristan says: "Do you think we should wash this note in vine­
gar?" (alluding to the use of vinegar as a disinfectant), and Teodoro
replies: "With you and it, you fool, we shall have both." Figuratively,
vinagre could mean either a sour person or a heavy drinker; my translation
tries to keep both possibilities.
63 Lope introduces a series of witty variations on the winged creatures mo­
tif. To Teodoro, Marcela now seems a mere butterfly; butterflies or moths
round a flame were often associated with the Icarus theme. For Tristan,
even mosquitoes in wine don't merit such arrogant contempt; Lope and
his contemporaries often referred to wine attracting or "engendering"
mosquitoes. Besides, he adds, Marcela used to be your eagle; the king of
birds was supposed to be the highest flier, and the only one able to gaze
directly at the sun.
64 Tristan lists six mock cures for lovers' ills, in imitation of chemists'
prescriptions, to which he compares love-letters; in Lope's text, each
starts "Recipe," and three contain other Latin words. The cosmetic use of
violet oil is mentioned in Lope's EI caballero del milagro, AcN 4, 146;
but the colour blue symbolised jealousy. Syrup of borage was said to
temper the blood and comfort the heart; but Lope may have intended a
pun, e.g. on borrar ("obliterate").
120 NOTES
65 For absence, Tristan literally prescribes "a poultice for the breast, for
you'd do best to stay in town"; for marriage, "soothing syrups, and after
ten pleasant days, purge it with antimony." As for one who like the
Goat is horned (cuckolded, see note 58), "this sufferer will die unless he
summons up patience"; but "if you take a jewel or a dress from a shop,
you will comfort the purse that so ventures with tablets (i.e. coins)."
66 Lope does not give Duke Caesar's surname, but must be referring to an
epigram on Cesare Borgia by Sannazaro: "Aut nihil, aut Caesar vult dici
Borgia: quid nil / Quum simil est Caesar possit, et esse nihil."
67 Similarly, Lope does not identify the king, but must be referring to Croe­
sus of Lydia; according to Herodotus I, 85, at the storming of Sardis by
Cyrus, "a certain Persian, not knowing who Croesus was, came at him
with intent to kill him.... This dumb son, seeing the Persian coming, in
his fear and grief broke into speech and cried: 'Man, do not kill Croesus.'
This was the first word he uttered, and after that for all the days of his
life he had power of speech."
68 Tristan's metaphors imply that he must always accompany Teodoro, who
in many of them is characterised as mobile or unreliable; in this case, for
instance, he says literally "a day of this changeable February" (prover­
bially an unpredictable month).
69 Literally, "about the tapestries you behold"; this may be only "verbal
decor," but Lope may have visualised the use of actual hangings (see
Introduction, p. 10). Dorotea refers to Teodoro's remark that "tapestries
tell tales"; later he will recall his own warning. Similarly, Diana sug­
gested in the first act that doors might speak, and later in this one will
say that the very stones of her house are speaking the name of the man
she loves. All are variants of the idea expressed by the Spanish proverb:
"las paredes oyen" ("Walls have ears"). A major theme, from first to
last, of this "secretary-play" is the necessity of keeping secrets, and the
likelihood that they may be revealed.
70 Literally, "Yours ever, in good or ill." Fabio's "signing-off," and his
comparison of Marcela to a letter marked "please forward," are typically
oblique reminders of Teodoro's role as Diana's servant. (See note 45.)
71 Anaxarete, by her coldness to her suitor Iphis, caused him to hang himself
at her door, and in punishment was turned to stone; see Metamorphoses
XIV, 698-764; Lope referred to her incessantly. Lucretia (mentioned
already; see note 53) was admired in Golden-Age Spain for her chastity
but also ridiculed as foolish; see J. E. Gillet, "Lucrecia-necia," Hispanic
Review, 15 (1947), 120-6.
72 Pasiphae, wife of Minos, King of Crete, supposedly fell in love with
a bull given to him by Poseidon; Daedalus (the father of Icarus) made
a wooden heifer in which she hid and so gratified her passion. She
conceived and bore a monster, which was imprisoned in a labyrinth, also
NOTES 121
designed by Daedalus; see Metamorphoses VIII, 131-76, & IX, 735-44;
AI'S Amatoria, 289-326. Semiramis, Queen of Assyria, was similarly
said to have had intercourse with a horse; see Pliny, Naturalis Historia
VIII, 64. Lope often referred to both together; cf. "Pasiphae loved a
bull. ... Semiramis a horse, and I forbear to mention other women for
their honour's sake. Many men have loved fishes and trees, and statues
too; what decrees have ever forbidden true love for a woman?"; La prueba
de los ingenios, B.A.E. 246, pp. 307-8.
73 Literally, "I have desired you for hours"; my translation seeks to preserve
this suggestive ambiguity. Anarda may have left the stage when Teodoro
entered, or may exit with the Countess later.
74 In this line Teodoro uses caer en ("fall into") in the idiomatic sense of "re­
alise suddenly"; but (in a comedy so preoccupied with rising and falling)
with an evident play on words which my translation tries to imitate.
75 Lope refers to Ulysses in over eighty other plays, especially for his own
cunning deceptions. Tristan in Act One mentions the Trojan Horse, and in
Act Three is himself compared to Ulysses. Here the reference is probably
to Circe's attempt to bewitch him, and their year-long amour.
76 To address one's loving thoughts as a battered little boat was to use a
commonplace image which for Lope became a personal one, most notably
in poems like "Pobre barquilla mia" in La Dorotea; see esp. E. S. Morby,
"A footnote on Lope de Vega's barquillas," Romance Philology, 6 (1952­
3),289-93.
77 Literally, "Love is engendered by equals." Compare "Love grows be­
tween equals," Las burlas veras, AcN 1, 57; "Love between unequals is
worth little and lasts less," Los locos de Valencia, AcN 12, 412.
78 In attempting (as Diana has and Teodoro will) to change an old love for a
new, Marcela has attempted to follow one of Ovid's remedies: "All love
is vanquished by a succeeding love," R.A. 462; indeed, one of Lope's
lines here, "curar el propio amor amor extraiio:" may recall "et posita est
cura cura repulsa nova," RA., 484.
79 Ovid had warned, however, against attempting to assuage the fire of
passion "when its fury is at full speed"; "The art of being timely is almost
a medicine.... Nay, you would inflame the malady, and by forbidding
irritate it, should you attack it at an unfitting time"; R.A., 117-20, 131-4.
80 In Cervantes' Tale of Impertinent Curiosity, Don Quixote, part I (1605),
ch. 33, Lotario recalls to Anselmo some lines he says he heard in a
modern play: "Woman is of glass, but whether it can or can't be broken
shouldn't be tested."
81 Jealousy of Marcela awakened originally and will intensify almost through­
out the play Diana's love for Teodoro, preventing her from "curing" it
for the sake of honour; as Ovid repeatedly stressed, "a rival is the chief
cause of our malady" (RA., 768; cf. 545-6).
122 NOTES
82 Note Lope's variations in this speech on the celestial imagery associated
with Diana, and compare Tristan's exit-line later.
83 On Lope's direction here, compare note 15.
84 It was a common (though much criticized) custom at this time for servants
to be expected to kneel before their employers, for instance to receive or
write letters.
85 Literally, "I'd like to make a thousand crosses"; Teodoro, drawing the
sign of the cross (as was the pious practice) at the head of the letter,
reflects on its symbolic use to ward off danger, as my version seeks to
clarify. The actor presumably writes with one hand, then crosses himself
with the other.
86 The letter (only), as was normal in the comedia, is in prose; the allusion
in my version to Malvolio's is of course intentional.
87 The waterwheel to which Diana is degradingly compared was until re­
cently a common sight in rural Spain; it figured in numerous proverbs,
was depicted as an emblem of the mutability of Fortune, .and is often
used metaphorically by Lope.
88 A thousand escudos would have represented a skilled tradesman's earn­
ings over at least three years; see E. J. Hamilton, American Treasure and
the Price Revolution in Spain (Harvard U.P., 1934), esp. p. 400. Later
Diana will give Teodoro 2,000 "to buy more handkerchiefs," and offer
him 6,000 to take to Spain, and Tristan willeventually be offered 1,000
to kill him. The grossly inflated sums which change hands in the co­
media are one measure of its unrealism; see especially E. H. Templin,
Money in the Plays of Lope de Vega (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1952). In every case, I have rendered escudos as "ducats," a word
familiar in English drama. Escudos and ducados were so similar that the
terms were often interchanged, e.g. by Lope (in 1615) in El galan de la
Membrilla; see the edition by Diego Marin and Evelyn Rugg (Madrid:
Boletin de la Real Academia Espanola, 1962),235, note to line 1106.
89 Lope frequently described jealousy as the shadow of love (as well as its
offspring; see note 27).
90 The warning that a bowstring may break if constantly stretched is a topos
that goes back at least to the Phaedrus, Ovid and St. John the Evangelist;
Perro, 206. The sonnet contains a series of familiar but disparate images,
intended perhaps to suggest the speaker's confused state of mind.
91 Note the references in this speech (and many others in the play) to the
Classical and Renaissance conception of erotes as physically (as well as
figuratively) a disease-entity, in need of medical treatment; Perro, 26-8.
.92 Such images of ice and fire recur thoughout the play, in association with
all three lovers; no mere Petrarchan commonplaces, they reflect a true,
human complexity of emotion.
93 Evidently she strikes him in the face. On the delivery of such blows in
NOTES 123
the course of a lovers' quarrel, their possible source in Lope's life, and
the recurrence of the motif in his works, see Perro, 19-20.
94 Lope surely built the sonnet about this first line of its sestet, which reads:
"0 mano poderosa de matarme!" (literally, "0 hand that has the power to
kill me!"). Contemporaries would have recognised it as a quotation from
Garcilasos Second Eclogue, line 798, and have seen perhaps an analogy
between Teodoro and the character who speaks it, Albano. Desperate with
desire for the chaste, Diana-worshipping Camila, Albano has dreamt of
her white hand; he has found her asleep, and on this line passionately
seizes, no doubt kisses, and holds on to it. (I do not suggest any such
analogy with my own familiar quotation, from Julius Caesar, IIUL).
95 Literally, "Love wants the knowledge of jealousy to enter with blood";
but Lope is alluding to a familiar proverb, "La letra, con sangre entra," to
the effect that teaching requires corporal, punishment, or that we learn only
from harsh experience. Hence my borrowing from Whiston Churchill's
speech of 13 May 1940.
96 Teodoro refers to the Classical notion of the Golden Mean; but extremos
connotes both "opposites" and "exaggerated displays of emotion," the
sense in which it is repeated at the act's end.
97 Literally, "she paid for the blood, and has made you a maiden in respect of
the nose"; my translation attempts to clarify the allusion to compensation
for the jus primae noctis, and to make up for my wordiness with a pun.
98 Literally, "will end up in the doctor's housekeeper." Tristan may be
pointing up the Countess's self-abasement; ama ("housekeeper") was also
the feminine form of amo ("overlord").
99 Literally, "How exactly the Moral Philosopher fitted to the pair of them
today that fable he depicted of the two pots." Lope refers, I believe,
to Aesop; the fable is one of his best known, and a Catalan edition of
them printed by H. Margarit at Barcelona in 1612 was headed: Favles
de [sop phi/osofmoral preclarissim; but he may also have recalled Sirach
(Ecclesiasticus) XIII.ii, or one of the emblems of Alciati.
100 Literally: "If Fortune does not move the skittles"; my replacement is
consonant with the figurative sense of the phrase defined by Autoridades
(bolo).
101 The pun tabernaculo-taberna was often used, as here, in Lope's time
(e.g. in El burlador de Sevilla, line 1197). The comic metaphor ermita
("hermitage"), similarly used by Celio a few lines later, was also common.
102 The wines mentioned (Lagrima, malvasia and vino greco) are all referred
to in other plays by Lope; they may all have been especially associated
with Italy, and intended to give local colour.
103 The first edition has formache; similar forms existed in Castilian and
Catalan, but Lope repeatedly used formacho as a conspicuous Italianism.
104 Frisones, commonly used as coach-horses, were so called because orig­
i24 NOTES
NOTES
125
inally from Frisia. Nevertheless, Lope may perhaps have meant this
dicated "travelling," and are often alluded to, as here, by Lope characters.
reference as further local colour; in El caballero de lllescas, AcN 4, 126,
118 This topos, which here becomes almost a refrain, was very frequently used
a servant is sent to buy "a Neapolitan Frisian."
(though also mocked) by Lope, for instance in a sonnet "Ir Y quedarse, Y
·105 Literally, "and many hundreds.-l don't like that about many hundreds";
con quedar partirse" ("To go and stay, and leave although remaining.")
but Tristan is playing with another common meaning of ciento ("a hundred
119 Note thesignificant stage movement implied by these lines. Fabio and.'
lashes").
Anarda offer (figuratively, perhaps) to perform the feudal ritual of kissing
106 In two copies of the first edition this lines reads: A casa VOY, que no esta
the new lord's hands. Marcela instead attempts an embrace, but this
de aqui muy lejos, which is overlong by one syllable. In another copy, Diana intercepts (see Introduction, p. 16) Stressing his new rank, she
and the second edition, no does not appear; in my own, I took this to
herself seeks his hands. In return he offers (perhaps literally) to kneel at
be a correct emendation. I am increasingly convinced, however, that que
her feet, not as a servant to his mistress (as previously) but rather as a
should be omitted instead in order to restore what Lope originally wrote. cavalier to his lady.
107 One of Ovid's most favoured cures for love was separation (R.A., 213-48,
120 Griego, like "Greek" in English, could mean an unintelligible jargon,
619-42, especially 214: "Go away, and make a lengthy voyage.") This "double-Dutch."
Lope (taking advantage of the rhyme with remedio) renders here, as else­
12] Tristan is evidently intended to hide behind the back-stage curtain, per­
where (e.g. La gatomaquia, Silva II, lines 132-3), as "tierra en rnedio,"
haps making himself visible from time.to time to the audience, before his
putting "earth between." He then has Teodoro play with variations on re-emergence at the end of the scene.
the earth metaphor: the imperviousness of the earth to thunderbolts, the 122 See note 72.
reduction of the body to dust and its interment in the ground. 123 Literally, hijo de la tierra ("a son of the earth"), meaning "one who has'
108 Diana curses her title Seiioria ("ladyship," i.e. her noble rank); see note no known parents or relations," Autoridades (hijo).
2. The first edition indicates that Teodoro exits here, but presumably he 124 Literally, "I being your joy , .. do you throw me down the well?";
left on his previous line.
Tristan picks up Diana's mention of the. well by alluding to a proverbial
109 A similar saying was attributed to Diogenes of Sinope, e.g. by Diogenes
expression connoting disappointment: "nuestro gozo, en el pozo" ("our
Laertius VI, 3; cf. Lope's El silencio agradecido, AcN 9, 155. joy, down the welL")
110 The common metaphor, of Classical origin, of the tree or wall embraced
125 Ludovico, like Teodoro and Diana, feels at the top of the wheel of Fortune;
by ivy or a vine, for the union of man and woman, was highly ambivalent;
the notion that it could be stayed by a golden nail was depicted in the
in this case the implications are clearly negative. The ivy, for some
emblems of Covarrubias, I, 65, appears in three plays by Juan Ruiz de
emblematists, including Covarrubias, I, 37, symbolised a whore.
Alarcon, and was mentioned by Lope in El villano en su rincon, lines
111 ella/alonia, though one of Tristan's nonsense-names, should perhaps be 22]7-9.
understood to refer to the island of Kefalinia, west of Greece.
112 Literally, "how well it enters" ("is swallowed"?).
113 Lope gives his actors eight words of "Greek," but four are normal Spanish,
and the others are easily understood distortions of common words.
114 almalafas (the word Lope uses here) were full-length garments worn by
Moorish women in Spain; see for instance Don Quixote I, 37.
115 Presumably he refers to the same overall costume as before; here Lope's
word is hopalandas, probably denoting a long waistless garment, with
sleeves and a flat collar, which he mentioned in other plays as worn by
characters dressed in Moorish, Turkish or Greek style; Perro, 214.
116 The notion that love is weakened by requital but reawakened by rejection
is central not only to this play but to Lope's ideas about love in general,
based on a lifetime's experience and exemplified especially in La Dorotea;
Perro, 19 and 214.
117 Spurs were a normal component of the costume which conventionally in-