Juan Ruiz de Alarcón y Mendoza (Taxco, New Spain - Madrid, 1639), the American dramatist of the Spanish stage
The one first-rank dramatist of the Golden Age born in the Americas, printed in Madrid in 1628 and Barcelona in 1634 while he held office as relator of the Council of the Indies. His nineteenth-century editor calls him "the distinguished American writer", quotes the verse in which he put the drainage works of the valley of Mexico on a Madrid stage, prints the lampoons on his crooked back, and doubts in the same volume whether he ever saw Mexico.
Why this wins its question: English-language reference works file Ruiz de Alarcon under the Spanish Golden Age and mention his Mexican birth in a clause, usually next to the observation that Corneille adapted "La verdad sospechosa". Read from the sheets of the Rivadeneyra collection, a different and better-evidenced object appears: an editor who calls him "the distinguished American writer" and admits he failed three times to collect him; a title page of 1628 that names him relator of the Royal Council of the Indies, so that the one American-born dramatist of the first rank was also a functionary of the government of the Indies; a Mexican Franciscan chronicle of 1682 cited for the birth at Taxco; the drainage of the valley of Mexico - the 1605 flood, the three-league cut, the fifteen hundred labourers, the two reales on each azumbre of wine - versified for a Madrid audience in "El semejante a si mismo"; and the lampoons on his back printed in full rather than alluded to. The counterpoint is taken from the same volume instead of from a critic: the editor doubts, in his own notes, whether Alarcon ever set foot in Mexico. That is the shape this corpus wants - the claim, the cost and the doubt in one place, each with a page behind it.
Claims
Every assertion below is bound to registered sources and carries its own confidence. Weight them; do not treat the page as uniformly authoritative.
The collected edition read here opens by calling him American and by admitting how hard he had been to collect. Its prologue announces that there come out at last into public light, gathered in one book, all the comedies attributed to "el esclarecido escritor americano don Juan Ruiz de Alarcon y Mendoza", an undertaking the editor says he attempted four times and failed in three of them; he adds that Alarcon was little fortunate during his life and that his rigorous star seems to pursue him still, two centuries after he took refuge in the sacred mansion of the sepulchre.
The printing history is given from the volumes themselves. In the year 1628 there appeared at Madrid a "Parte primera de las comedias de don Juan Ruiz de Alarcon y Mendoza, relator del Real Consejo de las Indias por Su Majestad", with a dedication and a short prologue by the poet, containing eight comedies: "Los favores del mundo", "La industria y la suerte", "Las paredes oyen", "El semejante a si mismo", "La cueva de Salamanca", "Mudarse por mejorarse", "Todo es ventura" and "El desdichado en fingir". A second part followed, not at Madrid but at Barcelona, in 1634, also with a dedication and prologue by Alarcon, which the editor takes as proof that it was a legitimate edition like the first, and it contained twelve comedies. The title page of the first part states his office in the government of the Indies alongside his name.
His American birth is argued in the same book from a Mexican source. The biographical notice states that Nicolas Antonio records he was born in Mexico although of Spanish descent, and that in corroboration the scholar Ochoa, in his "Tesoro del teatro espanol" printed at Paris in 1858, adds a citation from Baltasar de Medina's "Cronica de la provincia de San Diego de Mejico, de religiosos descalzos de San Francisco", printed in that capital in 1682, whose folio 251 says positively that Alarcon was born in Tasco or Tachco, province of Mexico, of a family originating in the small town of Alarcon, province and bishopric of Cuenca, district of San Clemente. A Mexican Franciscan chronicle of 1682 is the anchor for the birthplace, and the corpus notes that it was printed forty-three years after the poet's death.
The career is that of a colonial lawyer who wrote plays. The historical summary bound into the same volume states that he was born at Tasco in the kingdom of New Spain, in a year not known; that he is found in Europe in 1611, already licentiate in laws; that in 1628 he was relator of the Council of the Indies; that his death occurred in 1639; and that he dedicated his works, whose collection was very rare at that date, to Ramiro Felipe de Guzman, duke of Medina de las Torres, who was of the same Council and no doubt protected him.
The hostility he met is printed rather than summarised. The same summary states that in life he was derided even by wits who, like Lope de Vega, had no need of the vice of envy and were accustomed to lavish excessive praise on the most middling poets; that his best works were attributed to others; and that after his death he was not valued as he deserved, many others being preferred to him. It adds that his disfigured body lent itself to ridicule and contributed to the low esteem in which he was held, and prints the decima of the poet Juan Fernandez on his hunched back: "Tanto de corcova atras / Y adelante, Alarcon, tienes, / Que saber es por demas / De donde te corco-vienes / O a donde te corco-vas." It records that when the Duke of Cea commissioned him to describe certain festivities and the relation came out unhappily, everyone was unleashed against him, and that a collection of decimas exists in which he is cruelly satirised, composed for the most part by the wits of the court, the first among them not excepted.
What he did put on the Madrid stage was a piece of American public works. The first scene of "El semejante a si mismo" turns a courtiers' game of naming the wonders of the world into a set speech on the drainage of the valley of Mexico: "Mejico, la celebrada / Cabeza del indio mundo, / Que se nombra Nueva-Espana", seated in a valley ringed by mountains that serve so distinguished a city as haughty walls, whose springs and rivers die in a lagoon that surrounds and bathes it; the little sea grew in the year 1605 until it entered the houses; the viceroy, after many consultations of learned and aged people, cosmographers and master builders, of a thousand measurements and plans, resolved that at the lowest part a mine three leagues long should be driven through a hill so that the waters of the lagoon might pass through it to a river; fifteen hundred labourers worked continuously, and in little more than three years the journey of the three leagues of mine was completed, and the lagoon drained. The verse then names what the work cost and who paid it: two reales imposed on each azumbre of wine gave a hundred thousand ducats a year, which were spent on the drainage.
The counterpoint to his American identity is printed by his own editor, on the same play. In the critical observations at the end of the volume the editor quotes those two verses on Mexico, remarks that Mexico was a far more beautiful city than Madrid and that, it being almost the author's native country, it cannot be understood why he does not praise it more, why he does not do it the justice due, and concludes: "Acaso Alarcon vino a Espana de muy poca edad, tal vez sin haber estado en Mejico." The strongest claim that could be made for this object - an American writer speaking for America on the Madrid stage - is qualified in the very book that supplies the evidence for it, and this corpus prints the qualification rather than leaving it out.
The volume also records what recovery looked like, and its own place in it. The notice states that the memory of Alarcon and of other distinguished authors of the seventeenth century has been rehabilitated in public opinion, his name placed in the same temple and at the same height as those of Lope, Calderon, Tirso, Rojas and Moreto; that his best comedies have returned to the stage and to applause, that the press has reproduced many of them and criticism has analysed them; and that the publication of the whole theatre of this ingenio, gathered by the diligent care of the editors of the Biblioteca de Autores Espanoles, is announced as near. It adds that by good fortune for the national glory the repertory has been saved, though in very few copies, and can be reproduced entire because its number is small compared with those of the other fathers of the Spanish stage.