Further Notes on the Pando Editions of Calderón's «Autos»
Edward Meryon Wilson
Emmanuel College, Cambridge
In July 1959 my article «On the Pando Editions of Calderón's Autos» appeared in the Gillet Memorial Number of this journal1. In it I unwisely assumed that the number of copies of the different Pando editions and issues to which I had access in England was sufficient for my bibliographical purposes. A few days spent in the Biblioteca Nacional at Madrid during the summer of that year, however, convinced me that I had been hasty. Among other variants that I found there were Gayangos's six volumes of the black title-paged edition with the variant title page and preliminaries which distinguished Mr. Milburn's copy of volume II2. The six volumes all have the characteristic IHS block on leaf A 1r (page 1). I do not think that I need describe them further; issue (D) of the black edition consists of six volumes and is not merely a variant of volume II3.
Further surprises awaited me in the Biblioteca Nacional. A peculiar copy of volume III in large format with a red-and-black title page dated 1718 required further investigation4. The title page had been entirely reset, though its lay-out resembled superficially that of edition (A III); the text however seemed identical with that of the black edition (B). Two other volumes of this apparently hybrid edition or issue, which I shall call (1718), are owned by my old friend and former colleague don Enrique Moreno Báez, who has kindly forwarded them to Cambridge so that I can compare them with some of the other copies that I had examined before. Two volumes of another black title-paged issue have also come into my possession since 1958, and these also deserve some attention. And lastly I had not seen Faxardo's notes on Calderón's autos when I wrote the article mentioned above. They and the new evidence seem to imply that the black title-paged edition is some years earlier than I had suspected. This however does not contradict my former statement that it is later than the red-and-black edition.
The following rapid tests will serve to distinguish the various editions and issues that I have described more fully in this and in my 1959 articles.
- (A) Red-and-black title page, printed by Manuel Ruiz de Murga, 1717. On page 1 of the text there is a wood-block which depicts two boys; in the central portion are the letters IHS, a cross and three nails.
- (B) Black title page, with spelling AVTOS, printed by Manuel Ruiz de
Murga, 1717. On page 1 of the text is a wood-block which shows two
spread eagles on roughly triangular pedestals.
(1718) Red and black title page, printed «En MADRID, Año de 1718». On page one is the spread-eagle wood-block. - (C) Title page as in (B). On the first page the wood-block consists of stylised foliage, in the centre of which are the initials IHS and a cross whose base is the cross-bar of the letter H.
- (D) Black title page with spelling AUTOS, printed by Manuel Ruiz de Murga, 1717. Wood-block on page 1 as in C.
- (E) Title page as in (B) and (C). On the first page of the text is an inverted wood-block which shows two vaguely human seated figures.
Before the relation between these six editions and issues can be described the evidence provided by Faxardo must be discussed.
Don Juan Isidro Faxardo's Disertación sobre los autos sacramentales de don Pedro Calderón de la Barca was written in 1718. The manuscript has not yet been printed in full5. It was for some time in Gallardo's possession, and it now reposes in the Biblioteca Menéndez Pelayo at Santander6. Faxardo explains in it how the Municipality of Madrid had for years and without success tried to prevent the copying of the unprinted manuscript versions of Calderón's autos in their archives, and how the same body dealt with two attempts to print the autos some years earlier7. He then gives us the following short history of the publication of the Pando edition of 1717:
|
Iua[n] de Ezquerra Mercader de sedas de la Puerta de Guadalajara de Compañia con otros pidiò à Madrid le vendiesse vn permisso para hacer vna impresión g[ene]ral de todos los Autos; y como el Corregidor D[o]n Fran[cis]co de Salcedo, Marques del Badillo para las muchas obras, que executò en su t[iem]po buscaba fondos, y dineros, facilitò la pretension, y considerando la Villa, que yà no solo se hallaban estos escriptos, ô de mano, ô impressos en todos los curiosos del Reino, vendiò la facultad à Ezquerra en trescientos doblones; y en mui buen Papel de Genova, haviendo trahido la letra de Olanda, y hecho sacar en Amsterdan el Retrato de D[o]n Pedro del original, q[u]e està puesto sobre su sepulcro en la Yglesia Parroquial de S[a]n Salvador, se estamparon en seis tomos 72. Autos con sus Loas; en el primero se pusso solamente el retrato, y tirò la prensa hasta tres mil Iuegos, mitad en Madrid y mitad en Bilbao en Papel fino de Genova, y 25. Juegos en Papel de Marquilla. que todos salieron estampados en Madrid año de 1717. en la Ymprenta de Manuel Ruiz de Murga, dedicados a los Condes de Lemos por D[o]n Pedro de Pando, y Mier, que fuè vno de los que costearon la Ympression de Compania con Ezquerra, y salieron en esta forma....8 |
The statement
seems admirably clear. But what is the meaning of
«mitad en Madrid y mitad en
Bilbao»? Faxardo is usually reliable in his
declarations, but it is not easy to interpret this one. If, as I
had previously remarked, the black title-paged edition was printed
«after 1727 by an unknown printer who may
have been Ruiz's successor»
9,
then Faxardo must be referring exclusively to the red-and-black
title-paged edition. I have already noted that the Disertación is dated
1718. If edition (A) was printed in two different places, the two
printers might have agreed on some such division of labour as that,
say, vols. I-III be printed in one
city, IV-VI in the other. But on comparing the wood-blocks used in
all the volumes of (A) I soon found that any one used in volume I
might occur also in any one of the other five, and so with the
succeeding volumes. The only was in which the labour could have
been divided would have been by the first printer's sending to the
second a parcel of wood-blocks when he had finished his stint. This
seems a fantastic way of working, for no time could have been saved
by it. Despite the reasons which before led me to a different
conclusion, I now think that the two editions (A) and (B) were both
printed in 1717 and that Faxardo's words about the
«Papel fino de Genova» can
apply only to the former. If so (A) was probably printed in Madrid
by Ruiz de Murga himself and (B) by his partner in Bilbao. We know
that (B) was printed from (A) because of the evidence of the errata
in (A) corrected in (B)10.
Ruiz de Murga probably sent a copy of each volume to Bilbao as soon
as he had printed it.
The reader may remember that Ruiz de Murga appears to have ceased printing in 1718, the year after the appearance of the first edition of Pando's text. The preliminary pages of that issue of (B) which I have called (1718) may then be of that year. The five ornamental letters that make up the word AVTOS on the title page, the outer wood-block of ¶2r of volume I, the initial N on ¶2v and the wood-blocks on 2¶8r had all been Ruiz's property and used on the equivalent pages of (A). But Ruiz's name does not appear in the imprint: «En MADRID, Año de 1718». (1718) may then have appeared in that year for some special purpose that we know nothing about -one volume is in large format. This would confirm the theory set out in the last paragraph. Against it remain the considerable differences in spelling, in accents and in the use of capitals which before sufficed to make me think that (B) was some years later in date than (A). On the whole it now seems easier to assume that the printer of (B) printed with considerable freedom in spelling, etc. from (A) in 1717 as soon as a copy of each volume of (A) arrived from Madrid.
There is other evidence to prove that all the volumes of (B) were in fact printed in Bilbao. As has been mentioned earlier, in every volume of (B) the first loa is headed by a block which consists of two spread eagles; the first auto, in all the volumes but the first, is headed by another block which depicts a bird pecking a formalised branch, a monkey riding on a wolf's (?) back and a naked man who brandishes a club. This block appears also on p. 94 of volume I, at the end of A María el corazón. All six volumes, then, are probably the work of the same printer. The bird-monkey-man-with-club wood-block measures 9.5 x 2.8 centimeters in vols. I and II, 9 x 2.8 cms. in vols. III, IV, V and VI. In the first two volumes the bird's tail is complete; in the others it has been docked. The block is the same, but the left hand side has been sawn off, perhaps to make the monkey occupy a more central position, between' the printing of volumes II and III. A longer impression of the same block is also to be found in two books printed in Bilbao in 1669. They are Las ordenanzas que tiene, vsa, y guarda la muy noble Villa de Bilbao, confirmadas por sus Magestades and the Ordenanzas de la casa de la contratacion de la muy noble, y leal villa de Bilbao11, both printed by «Roque Rico de Miranda, Impressor del muy Noble, y muy Leal Señorio de Vizcaya». In each book this block appears on the leaf next after the title page. In these books of 1669 it measured 11.3 x 2.8 cms.; moreover it depicted also a dragon on the left of the bird and some formal foliage on the right of the man with the club. The ends of the block, then, must have been cut off between 1669 and 1717. There can be no doubt about the identity of the central portion of the block itself at these two dates. I do not know when Rico de Miranda stopped printing. Apparently the Ordenanzas de la noble villa were reprinted by Antonio de Zafra y Rueda of Bilbao in 171112. If this book bears the block described then Zafra may have been the printer of (B).
Let us sum up. The different editions and issues were probably printed as follows:
- (A) Printed in Madrid, by Manuel Ruiz de Murga, 1717.
- (B) Printed in Bilbao, 1717, by a sub-contractor, perhaps Zafra
y Rueda, but with Manuel Ruiz de Murga's imprint preserved.
(1718) Preliminaries printed in Madrid, 1718, text in Bilbao, 1717. - (C) Parts of some early gatherings printed in Madrid after 1717, the rest in Bilbao, 1717.
- (D) Preliminaries and parts of some early gatherings printed in Madrid after 1717, the rest in Bilbao, 1717.
- (E) Parts of some early gatherings printed at an unknown place after 1717, the rest in Bilbao, 171713.