Juan Pérez de Montalbán's «Para todos»¹

Para todos has usually been regarded, by those scholars to whom it has been anything but a mine of information on seventeenth-century writers, as a disastrous failure. It has interested them chiefly because on its appearance in 1632 it was immediately attacked (with more force than they would have thought needful) in Quevedo's Perinola, «una de las más feroces diatribas que se han escrito en lengua castellana.»² Its publication has accordingly been seen as a prelude to the literary war between Montalbán and Quevedo, or more often -since the latter are assumed, without any solid proof, to have been personal enemies before Perinola was written³- as an episode in that war. Its phenomenal popularity throughout the next hundred years -it was reprinted fourteen times at least, and «translated» into French and English⁴- has been explained away as a result of the publicity it derived from the ensuing polemics. But as Edward Glaser has only recently suggested, «so clever and scathing is Quevedo's satire against the alleged folly and pedantry of Montalván that later critics have been taken in by his statements [...] The accepted views on the controversy stand in need of modification.»⁵ If we examine afresh the form and content of the work, we should be able to form clearer notions of its nature and intrinsic value, and to understand why it appealed so strongly to the taste of its time. And if we investigate the circumstances of its composition, we may decide that its publication was not so much an early move in the war with Quevedo, as a late sortie in a struggle which has almost escaped attention until now, between Montalbán and Jerónimo de Villaizán⁶.

The burden of Quevedo's criticism -and it is echoed in modern descriptions, in Bacon's «hodge-podge» and Amezúa's «cajón de sastre»⁷- is that Para todos must be censured on two counts : for the heterogeneity of its contents and the disorderliness of its construction. Montalbán's answer would have been, in the first place, that diversity of style and content had been his main intention in the work, and was its principal merit. This «aparato de varias materias» as he claimed somewhat optimistically in the introduction Al que ha de leer, would entertain, instruct and edify every possible reader. Such variety as it contained was found in classical authors, and indeed in everyday life, since it was a characteristic of cultured conversation and even of sermonising. He was thus imitating, in this respect, both the Ancients and Nature⁸.

At the same time, he was exaggerating an expansive tendency already obvious in the genre to which Para todos belongs -that of the frame-story. The Decameronesque framework, although Montalbán had himself eschewed it in his collection Sucesos y prodigios de amor of 1624, was the favourite device of other Golden Age novellieri, in whose hands it had undergone considerable evolution⁹.

They had for instance included plays as well as novels within the frame¹⁰, although never as many as Montalbán included in Para todos. They had imagined the sections into which the contents were divided as sessions of academias like those of the time -opportunities for retailing verses, discourses and witticisms¹¹; but they had never offered those academies such a bulk of erudite information. Certainly they had never attempted to embrace in one frame-story such a diversity of literary forms.

On the other hand, and despite this deliberate diversity, Para todos cannot justly be said to lack continuity and cohesion. Its formal construction is the reverse of disorderly, as an analysis will show:

A romantic adventure (the short novel Introducción a la semana) ends happily with a double wedding; and at the celebrations, which are held at a quinta on the banks of the Manzanares (and which include a performance of the play El segundo Séneca de España), each of seven gentlemen of Madrid -Fabio, Silvio, Lisardo, Anfriso, Montano, Celio and Valerio- is invited to afford a day's entertainment for a «cortesana Academia.» Their contributions all follow the same pattern : 1) a commentary on the part of Creation which we are told in Genesis was performed on the day of the week in question, and a discussion of the planet and pagan god associated with that day. 2) a learned discourse on some serious subject. (The topics are Philosophy, the Mass, Arms, Angels, Preaching, the Arts and «lo mejor de lo mejor.») 3) An entertainment -a novela, a comedia or a pair of autos. 4) A sonnet, supposed to have been sung. (Before this, on the last Day, the well-known Indice de los ingenios de Madrid and Memoria de los que escriben comedias en Castilla solamente are said to have been recited).

The work has obviously more unity and clarity of structure than its contemporaries in the Decameronesque genre. Except in Tirso's Los cigarrales de Toledo, which may indeed have been Montalbán's chief inspiration for the form of Para todos¹², the frame story itself had remained in such works merely a perfunctory pretext; but Introducción a la semana «has a plot, an action of its own, independent of its function of cradling» the remainder¹³. It is still not an integral part of the work; it offers only a reason for the diversions of which that work is supposed to consist. The gentlemen providing these (who are not characterised or differentiated, except that Montano must be Montalbán himself)¹⁴, had not been concerned in the action of the frame-story; but that Montalbán went so far as to provide that action, that he even sketched in such a background, argues some concern for the cohesion of the work. The sections moreover, while they are clearly seen as separate, form together a logical whole. Their number is not arbitrary, as in previous framestories¹⁵; they are seven, because each is associated with one day of a complete week. Thus the little treatises on things connected with each weekday could be extracted to make up a complete symposium.

We might say, therefore, that Para todos represented the extension and at the same time the partial reconciliation of two contrary developments in a favourite contemporary genre -an experiment typical of the baroque in that it offered a new tension between variety and unity, between chaos and order. But we must not wax too grandiloquent on Montalbán's behalf. He may have had more humdrum reasons for wanting to include such a variety of types of writing, and have felt obliged to lend the work some semblance of formal cohesion by way of compensation and concealment. We shall see that he must in 1632 have been especially glad to have hit upon the idea of so accommodating a compendium; although any writer of his versatility, in any age, might have welcomed a similar pretext to unload on the public -together with a little new material- such unpublished work as lay gathering dust on his shelves. For the bulk of Para todos, it seems likely, was not originally written with Para todos in mind.

The four comedias and two autos had already been successfully staged; Montalbán chose them from among his best and best-known plays. El segundo Séneca de España, the most interesting of his three plays about Philip II, had been produced by Tomás Fernández, «con general aplauso de todos» (fol. 7v); and there is some confirmation for a conjecture by J. H. Parker that it was written between 1625 and 1628¹⁶. In the first place, its chief historical source was not, as G. W. Bacon thought he had proved, Cabrera de Córdoba's Filipe Segundo Rey de España (Madrid, 1619)¹⁷; Montalbán certainly consulted that monumental work, but he relied in the main on what he calls in Para todos (fol. 352r) «vn Manual a la Historia de la Magestad de Felipe Segundo el Prudēte», which was printed for his father Alonso Pérez in 1625¹⁸. In the second place, the play may very tentatively be identified with an El segundo Sol de España which figured among the comedias seized from Juan Jerónimo Amella at Valencia in 1628¹⁹.

The lively novelesque drama No hay vida como la honra had been performed with Antonia Manuela as its heroine; it had been produced by Roque de Figueroa (fols. 39r and 61r). We know in fact that Roque produced it at court before 28 March 1628²⁰. It enjoyed -at its first appearance, presumably- the unprecedented distinction of simultaneous performance for many days in both the public corrales of Madrid²¹; and by 1630 it had been played as far away as Lima²². Polo de Medina, moreover, wrote in his Academias del jardín (1630) of an amateur performance in which he himself had taken the lead²³.

De un castigo dos venganzas and La más constante mujer, too, had been performed with success; but they will be discussed later.

The auto El Polifemo must have been written after Lope's La Circe (published in 1624), to which it was undoubtedly indebted²⁴. It may well have been commissioned for Corpus Christi 1628; for at the end of the text in Para todos (fol. 226v) we read, as if a note on the manuscript had been set up with it: «Tocan y bueluese a cerrar todo, cō que se da fin al Auto del Polifemo. Madrid y Abril de 1628.»²⁵

The auto Escanderbech -an ingenious recasting a lo divino of the first of Vélez de Guevara's two plays about Skander Beg, El príncipe Escanderbey- had been performed with «la Belera» as its heroine (fol. 228r). This actress, Isabel Hernández, belonged -in 1631 at least- to the company of Rogue de Figueroa²⁶; and on a preliminary leaf of a manuscript of the play at the Biblioteca Nacional (No. 15.213) we read: «Auto del principe esclabo escanderbech. Representose en Madrid ano de 1629. Representole Roque.» Roque's must have been one of the two companies which performed the autos in Madrid at Corpus Christi 1629²⁷; and Escanderbech may well have been written for him.

Of the sonnets at the end of each Day, the first, we shall see later, was in any case not by Montalbán. Two more, «Corre con pies de sonorosa plata» (Fourth Day) and «Hilaba el Sol, hilaba Porcia un dia» (Fifth Day), were borrowed from Act I of his own El Señor Don Juan de Austria (1627-28)²⁸, although in each case the Para todos version differs slightly from that in the first printed text of the play, in Montalbán's Primero tomo (1635)²⁹. The other four sonnets I have not found elsewhere; but Montalbán may have borrowed them from plays now lost, or may simply have had them on hand.

The four novelas, too, were very possibly not written for inclusion in Para todos. Even the one which constitutes the frame, Introducción a la semana, may only have been adapted for that purpose. Any novela cortesana which ended with a wedding -as almost all do- would have served our author's turn. Furthermore, eighteen lines of a romance, «Quien muere de amor, zagales», used in it as a serenade, were also used by Montalbán in Act II of Polifemo y Circe (1630). It seems likely that the longer version was the earlier, and was written, therefore, before 1630; perhaps the novel was also.

Similarly, the original version of the canción «Yaze a la vista ya de Barcelona», stanzas of which were used by Montalbán in Act II of Polifemo y Circe (as well as in Act I of his A lo hecho no hay remedio, of uncertain date), was probably the one which appears in the novel Al cabo de los años mil. That novel, too, therefore, may well have been written before 1630.

Again, a sonnet which appears in Al cabo de los años mil, «Hiere el rayo en un tronco, mas la herida», and one in the fourth novel, El piadoso bandolero, «Es tan grande mi amor, Señora mía», seem to me earlier (and better) than the versions of the same poems which Montalbán used in his plays Lo que son juicios del cielo and Despreciar lo que se quiere, although the latter, unfortunately, cannot be closely dated.

The three novels so far mentioned are sufficiently indistinguishable in style and content from those in Sucesos y prodigios de amor to have been written well before Para todos appeared. Only the one related on the Fourth Day, El palacio encantado, which recalls his late, spectacular plays on chivalresque themes, seems less likely to have been an early work. A curious feature of this novel is the discourse on the Perfect Prince which is introduced on the pretext that the heroine required her suitor to prepare and deliver it. One is tempted to picture Montalbán discovering that he has one more little learned treatise than he needs for Para todos, and casting anxiously around for a place to «work it in.» For even some of the discourses may not have been written in the first instance for Para todos; it may be significant, for example, that Montalbán twice tells us -in the Repartimiento de los siete días (fol. 28r) and in the Second Day (fol. 67v)- that the discourse on the Mass was written at the request of «una devota.» Nevertheless, the discourses, and the commentaries on the days of the week -the apparently erudite parts of Para todos- were no doubt the newest and most essential. They argue a desire on Montalbán's part to impress his readers by a display of ability in the field of popular scholarship, on which he had to some extent already ventured in Vida y purgatorio de San Patricio (1627). But such a desire, as he should have known, was doomed to disappointment; for if knowledgeable enough about Preaching and the Mass, Montalbán was too little versed in many of his topics not to seem at times superficial and even silly. His seeming erudition was mostly at second-hand; the commentaries on the god and planet associated with each day, for instance, came for the most part -marginal notes and all- from Baltasar de Vitoria's Teatro de los dioses de la gentilidad (1620-1623). Montalbán must certainly have hoped that he would be thought, on the strength of Para todos, «un verdadero erudito»; but he was not, as Amezúa implied, so full of illdigested learning that he felt constrained to unburden himself of some of it. Para todos was not a safety-valve for superabundant erudition.

What then was the compulsion for Montalbán to publish his curious compendium? He was aware no doubt, as Amezúa further suggested, that it would be as popular with the vulgo as other similarly encyclopaedic works³⁰. He was tired, as we shall see, of writing plays. He was anxious especially, as Glaser has put it, «to achieve recognition as an accomplished scholar in many fields.» But in this he had, I believe, a more immediate motive than ordinary ambition. In Perinola we find an allegation concerning Para todos which at first seems absurdly exaggerated, to say the least, but can be shown, if properly understood, to contain more than a germ of truth. Why, Quevedo asks, did Montalbán write it? «Brevemente lo diré. Pues fué solamente para decir mal, con todas sus muelas, de Villaizán.»³¹

In 1624 Montalbán and Jerónimo de Villaizán had been on friendly terms, we must suppose; Villaizán had contributed a laudatory décima to Montalbán's Orfeo en lengua castellana of that year. But subsequently, it is clear, a bitter rivalry had arisen between them, although we cannot be certain exactly how and why. Quevedo might seem to have given the answer when earlier in Perinola he accused Montalbán of having misappropriated a play: «A éste, pues, llaman Hominicaco, por lo chico y por los hurtos, porque se averiguó que aruñó una comedia entera a Villaizán, y el primero testigo mayor de toda excepción fué lo que había escrito antes y lo que escribió después.» But there is nothing approaching identity between any extant play of Villaizán's and any attributed to Montalbán; and in the Trompa which Montalbán is supposed to have written in reply to Perinola, the accusation, as one might expect, is energetically rebutted : «En lo que me dices que me agrego comedias, digo en lenguaje castellano que mientes.»³² On the other hand, we might conjecture, on the basis of the following lines in a much-quoted letrilla by Antonio Hurtado de Mendoza, «A Don Geronimo de Villayzan, porque todas las comedias, que se representauan, y hazian, se dizia que eran suyas», that Villaizán had been known to steal from Montalbán:

¿Quién es Pedro de Urdemalas? ¿Quién Birimbao con sus galas? ¿Quién las comadres Ayalas? ¿y quién don Joseph de Salas Pellicer y Montalbán? Villaizán.33

However, a manuscript at the Biblioteca Nacional (No. 3.773) throws new light on the problem³⁴. On fol. 139, at the head of two sonnets attributed to one Pedro de la Peña, we read : «A Don Germo de Villaiçan quando escriuio vna comedia que no parecio bien despues se hizo la de vn castigo dos venganças que fue suia, de que nació la competencia con Iuº Perez de Montaluan; y Para aberiguar la verdad hizo Villaiçan la comedia de sufrir mas por querer mas: y Montaluan la de la mas constante muger que no fue tan buena y quedo vencido.» Pedro de la Peña, or whoever composed this epigraph, may have been ill-informed or as biased against Montalbán as was Quevedo; but if we adopt his story as an hypothesis to be tested, we shall find that it tallies for the most part with other evidence, and that the events concerned occurred shortly before the publication of Para todos.

We cannot identify the «comedia que no parecio bien.» Montalbán said in Para todos, as we shall see, that Villaizán had written three plays by 1632. But in all seven attributed to him have come down to us, as well as the titles of three «lost» plays.

We cannot accept, as our manuscript seems to suggest, that De un castigo dos venganzas was written by Villaizán, although we have independent evidence that it was the centre of considerable controversy. The only play by that title known to us, the play in Para todos, was certainly by Montalbán³⁵. G. W. Bacon and J. H. Parker have supposed that he wrote it in 1625-26, because of references to an expedition to Brazil against the Dutch -apparently that of 1624-25- and of Violante's lines near the close:

Y aqui esta comedia acaba, historia tan verdadera que no ha cincuenta semanas que sucedió...36

But we need not take this apparent «periodismo» too literally; Montalbán was writing a drama de honor -an unconventional one in that the guilty wife and lover are murdered not by the husband but by the lover's discarded mistress- rather than a «documentary» like Lope's El Brasil restituido (1625). He could have chosen the departure of the expedition as the background of his play years after the event³⁷.

Other evidence points to his having written the play about 1630. On a preliminary leaf of a manuscript at the Biblioteca Nacional (No. 17.061), we find the following cast-list:

manuel vallejo	.....	d. Juº de silua
maria de riquelme	.....	d. violante ataide
lorenço vrtado	.....	d. lope de almeida
vernarda	.....	d. leonor faria
salinas graçioso	.....	garito
geronima	.....	ines criada de violante
maria de caballos	.....	luisa de leonor criada
salas	.....	el correjidor38

It was to performances by this company that Montalbán was referring when he wrote in Para todos: «Vltimamēte el aplauso de todos en comun, fue mucho; tanto por la valentia de la Comedia, quanto por la gran representacion de Maria de Riquelme, gala y aliño de Bernarda» (fol. 135v). He also alluded to the play there as one which had enjoyed, recently, a phenomenal success: «[...] vna Comedia que vi ayer en el teatro desta Corte [...] de las mas aplaudidas jamas ha auido en ella.» (fol. 110v). «[...] se representò en esta Corte veinte y vn dias continuos, teniendo siempre mucha gente; que esto llamo yo representarse: porque hazer vna comedia diez ò doze sin auer otras tantas personas que la oigan, no es representar el Autor su Comedia, sino su necessidad.» (fol. 102v).

Hurtado de Mendoza, moreover, had probably been seeing Vallejo's company when he described a riotous performance of the play in a romance «Al Conde Duque, haviendo visto la Comedia, De vn castigo dos venganças», written not earlier than 1629³⁹. Of course Vallejo's performances may have constituted merely a revival of a play written and staged some years before; but they are surely more likely to have been the first performances of a brandnew play.

De un castigo dos venganzas may have been falsely attributed to Villaizán. Montalbán took some pains in Para todos to scotch a rumour that he himself was not its author: «[...] no faltò quien intētò quitarle la gloria a quien la auia escrito, es el Dotor Iuan Perez de Montaluan, buscādola dueños supuestos y no conocidos. Tan inuencionera es la embidia, y tātos modos introduze para desluzir los estudios agenos. Si biē el consuelo que a su dueño le ha quedado en este sucesso, es saber, que para con los hōbres que saben, antes ha ganado que perdido [...]» (etc., etc. -fols. 110-111). Pedro Escuer, however, the editor of Diferentes XXV, said there of the play that it had been written by Montalbán in competition with one by a rival : «Esta comedia es de las mejores que hay escritas en nuestra lengua Castellana, su autor de los mas celebrados, su traza, y estilo de los mas heroycos, y hecha en competencia de otra no menos buena, y de Autor no menos Ilustre.» And Antonio Enríquez Gómez was to state that Montalbán wrote it to be avenged on his competitors: «[...] el Doctor Iuan Perez de Montaluan, entre muchas comedias que escriuió, puso en las tablas la de vn castigo dos venganzas con que se vengó de sus emulos (notable ingenio fue éste).»⁴⁰ Quevedo alleged in Perinola, moreover, that the play was notoriously not all Montalbán's own work: «[...]bien se sabe que no fue suya otra cosa sino aquella disoluta y desvergonzada acción de aquella mujer infernal.»⁴¹

The explanation of these contradictory assertions may be that Montalbán's play was deliberately modelled on one by Villaizán, and could be regarded, according to one's allegiances, as a parody, as an original refundición, or as a shameless piece of plagiarism. None of the extant plays attributed to Villaizán is like De un castigo dos venganzas; but the play in question may have been his «lost» De un agravio tres venganzas, of which we know only that in a fantasy by Fabio Franchi, Villaizán was made to say: «[...] hauendo fatto la Comedia, che intitolai De vn agravio tres venganzas, che meritò l'vdienza, e la lode del Gioue, & Apolo della Sfera Terrestre Filippo IV. il Magno; maleditione di miei Emuli me fecero entrare in compagnia di altri due Poeti à fare vna comedia comune di tre [...].»⁴²

The reference here to Philip IV recalls other evidence of that monarch's favour towards the young Villaizán. Various critics have observed that, according to the anonymous author of a defence of the comedia addressed half-a-century later to Charles II, Philip deigned to visit the corrales incognito when plays by Villaizán were being performed there. What has not, I think, been noticed is that the same writer adds, alluding undoubtedly to the very rivalry we are now investigating: «El príncipe D. Carlos, tío de V. M., al mismo tiempo fortaleció de honores, en literal competencia, á Juan Pérez de Montalván, alentando uno y otro hermano á que elevasen sus vuelos estas dos dichosas plumas. ¡Dichoso siglo y siempre más dichosos ingenios que coronaron vuestras frentes contra el rayo del olvido los laureles de tan relevantes Mecenas!»⁴³

The dispute between Montalbán and Villaizán, however it originated, clearly became for a time a burning issue at court, with patrons of the very highest rank supporting the rival contenders. We can well believe therefore that each was urged to write another play «para aberiguar la verdad», and that accordingly, as our manuscript asserts, Villaizán produced Sufrir más por querer más and Montalbán La más constante mujer.

Sufrir más por querer más was mentioned in a contract dated 23 November 1632⁴⁴, and was published that year in Diferentes XXV, where Escuer wrote of it: «Esta comedia se representò a su Magestad, con tantos aplausos de su aceptacion, que, honrando a su autor, le mandò no la representara por entonces en otra parte.»⁴⁵ It may well have been written, therefore, as I am suggesting, in 1630 or 1631. We can easily be persuaded, moreover, that Villaizán wrote it in competition with Montalbán. The essentials of its plot -it tells, as do Villaizán's Más valiera callarlo que no decirlo and Ofender con las finezas, of two lovers repeatedly separated by mutual jealousies and misunderstandings -might have been borrowed deliberately from Montalbán's Despreciar lo que se quiere or his Aborrecer lo que quiere.

At various points, too, we can perhaps detect a parody of Montalbán's poetic diction. The most notable instance concerns an epic simile used in three décimas spoken by Leonor near the end of Sufrir más por querer más. Her tears, she says, are like a pearl engendered in its shell by the dew of dawn, and growing bright if the heavens remain unclouded, but dull if they are overcast. The lines begin :

¿Viste la concha del mar, que bebiendo el sudor frío del Alba, de aquel rocío la perla empieza a formar...?

Not only the image, but the language also was surely borrowed from a passage of twenty-eight lines of romance spoken by Violante in Act I of De un castigo dos venganzas. The love in her heart for Juan, she says, is like a pearl engendered in its shell by the dew of dawn; her tears, when it is torn from her, are like fragments of shell torn out with it. The lines begin:

¿Viste la concha del mar que bebiendo el sudor bello del Alua, forma vna perla en su concauo pequeño...?46

This piece of plagiarism must have become notorious; for Pedro de la Peña, with considerable wit (if little poetic skill), parodies the parody in the second of the sonnets in our manuscript. Villaizán's work, he says, like a pearl in its shell, grew dull when overshadowed by clouds of envy, but now shines bright in the sun of King Philip's favour:

En bruto albergue si de nacar puro    forma del alua influjo misterioso    con cincel blando de sudor precioso    el glouo armiño a la codicia muro. Si a su ser melancólico y obscuro    asiste el sol desmedra el parto hermoso    mas si contento brilla y poderoso    su lustre es cierto y su balor seguro. Mil perlas dio tu ingenio sin segundo    y de la imbidia conjuradas sombras    deslucieron su ser negando el [tiem] po [??] Mas con la que oy triunfando das al mundo    el monstruo guellas la esperança asombras    porque nacio a la luz del gran Philippo.47

La más constante mujer, by contrast, shows no clear sign of having been written in competition with Villaizán; but Montalbán himself has confirmed that he wrote the play to vindicate his reputation at a time when it was menaced by the machinations of jealous rivals. In 1635, dedicating Cumplir con su obligación to Don Gaspar Alonso de Guzmán el Bueno and referring presumably to the episode we are discussing, he wrote:

Acuerdóme que yendo vn dia a valerme del Principe de Esquilache, como Principe de la lengua, y la poesia Castellana, contra vna cautela que me traçò la embidia, para entretener vn mes la ociosidad de la Corte, encontre à V. E. y contandole la injusticia que padecia la verdad de mi ingenio, se ofreciò por mi Valedor, que como à los grandes Señores sirue de empeño el auerlos menester solamente, lo mismo fue preuenir mi defensa, que escuchar mi injuria, y esto con tanto afecto, que viendo que mi desagrauio consistia en la Comedia de La mas constante muger, que estaua escribiendo, quiso oyrla antes que saliesse a la censura de la tablas, para atenderla como discerto, y mejorarla como interesado.48

We need not be perturbed by a suggestion of J. H. Parker's -largely on the evidence of its versification, «which closely resembles that of De un castigo dos venganzas»- that the play was written as early as 1625-26⁴⁹; for there are clear indications to the contrary.

In the prologue to Para todos Montalbán tells us that compiling his miscellany had offered him a respite «por algunos meses» from the writing of plays; in the dedication of the fourth Day he states, we shall see, that that the labour involved took him «medio año»; but in the dedication of the First Day he further says that he stopped writing plays for the purpose immediately after the performance -the first performance, he must mean- of La más constante mujer: «Luego que se representò la Mas cōstante Muger, propuse no hazer otra hasta escriuir este libro» (fol. 29v). At the end of the play, moreover, he writes of its estreno: «Todos quantos assistieron a la Comedia, la auian visto representar en el Teatro desta Corte, donde sin diligencias ni fauores, porque su dueño no las hizo, ni los tuuo; salio con credito de la mejor que auian visto suya. Escriuiola en quatro Semanas, estudiose en ocho dias, y representose muchos, hasta que la cortò el hilo la forçosa fiesta del Corpus, porque a no atrausesarse este inconueniente, a pesar del calor, y de la embidia, passara otros quinze dias» (fol. 337v). He tells us too that it was performed by Vallejo (fol. 313v); and we know both that Vallejo's was one of the companies which performed the autos in Madrid at Corpus (19 June) 1631⁵⁰, and that they presented La más constante mujer at court on 5 October that year⁵¹. The conclusion is inescapable that the play was written in April and May of 1631.

If now, having learned so much of the dispute between Montalbán and Villaizán, we look again at Para todos, we find in many passages what may be allusions to that dispute and covert sniping at the enemy. (It may be, needless to say, that not all of these passages concern Villaizán: in some Montalbán may be attacking Quevedo, or other enemies, or ´-as he claims- nobody in particular. But they seem to me to lend weight to Quevedo's allegation).

Dedicating the volume as a whole to Don Ramiro de Guzmán, Montalbán writes: «Agradezco a la calumnia los pesares que me tiene hechos, solo porque a bueltas de los agrauios fue causa de la Proteccion de V. Excelencia [...]» (fol. p8); and in his prologue Al que ha de leer (fols. p6-p7), he admits that he has dedicated the seven Days to seven other individuals in anticipation of similar trouble yet to come: «[...] dirijole a diferentes personas, porque para muchos enemigos, bien son menester muchos valedores.» He confesses in the same prologue that he is weary of writing plays, and gives five reasons:

Lo primero, por ser estudio peligrosissimo auer de guisar vn plato que contente a todo vn pueblo entero, siendo sus gustos tantos como diferētes. Lo segundo, por ya el logro de vna Comedia consiste mas en el fauor del Padrino, en el acierto del Poeta, si bien en cargandose de razon los del patio, suelen atropellar las mayores dificultades. Lo tercero, porque antes eseriuia yo cada año quatro ò cinco Comedias por mi passatiempo; pero aora lo era gusto me han hecho pesadumbre; y lo que era diuertimiento, competencia: y soy muy modesto para andar en semejantes batallas. Lo quarto, por estâ el vulgo tā nouelero, que con se le antoje a vno dezir por chança que no es mia la comedia que estoy escriuiendo, no faltarà vn piadoso lo apoye, y vn apassionado lo crea: y mientras se auerigua la verdad, yo me bueluo loco y mi opiniō padece. Y lo quinto y vltimo, porque ya no agradezco se celebren las Comedias de los hombres que en esta Facultad escriuen con sesso; pues tal vez se haze la misma fineza con los no lo merecen, aplaudiendo muchas cosas, no porque fueron buenas, sino porque parecio lo eran [...] con cuyo aplauso quedan sus dueños tan engreidos, que no hay quiē se pueda aueriguar con ellos [...]

He has called this book Para todos, he adds, because it is intended for every type of reader, but also

«porque también hablo en èl de todos los embidiosos, soberuios, presumidos, maldicientes, mentirosos, embusteros, murmuradores, desleales, descorteses, ignorantes, vanos, y mal intencionados: mas esto ingenuamente, sin ser mi intento ofender a ninguno con particularidad: y assi nadie se agrauie, porque lo demas serâ hazerse culpado en el vicio que reprehendo, que la sal solamente escuece en la parte donde estâ la herida, y mas vale disimular la reprehension oculta, que confessar el delito claro.»

Despite -or because of- such protests, we may suspect that Montalbán's high-minded moralisings conceal attacks on individual enemies, and on Villaizán in particular. Readers of the novelesque Introducción a la semana, for instance, may have been intended to recognise the author's rival under the guise of the villainous Don Rodrigo -especially at the moment of his discomfiture: «Hallose don Rodrigo tan corrido y auergonçado, que le fue forçoso retirarse por muchos dias a vn lugar suyo, para escusarse de oîr mil generos de satiras que le hizieron, siendo fabula y risa de todo el pueblo: desgracia bien merecida de su mal modo: porque no ay accion tan vil, ni baxeza tan indigna, como prohijarse vn hōbre lo que otros hazen para alcançar lo que no merece» (fol. 7r)⁵². Montalbán probably had cause for personal resentment over such misappropriations; in the dedication of the First Day he calls the comedia included there, No hay vida como la honra, «de las mias la tuuo mayor aplauso, y sin pesadumbre, duda, ni sobresalto: que como entonces las Comedias que cada vno escriuia, erā suyas, despues de hazerlas, y acertarlas, no quedaua riesgo pudiera temerse» (fol. 29v).

The sonnet at the end of the First Day is an epigram, much celebrated at the time, by Prince Carlos of Austria (1607-32)⁵³; by including it, Montalbán is enabled to eulogise indirectly the most eminent of his protectors in the recent dispute, «[...] por ser su Autor el Heroe mas diuino, el Astro mas Noble, el Espiritu mas Eminente, el Museo mas Insigne, el Iouen mas Soberano, y el Apolo mas ceñido de rayos y de laureles, despues del quarto Planeta, que le ilustra; que con estas señas sin dezirse, se dize su nombre» (fol. 61r). In the dedication of the Second Day, however, he tells Don Luis Méndez de Haro y Sotomayor that he -unlike, he implies, some people he might mention- is too retiring to push himself into favour: «Bien sè que no es esta la senda por donde se passa a la gracia de los Principes; mas yo quiero mas perderme por retirado, ganarme por entremetido, por suelē los lo son, tener mucho andado para su desprecio.» Nevertheless he was glad of Don Luis's patronage and protection «no ha muchos meses» (fol. 62).

In the dedication of the Third Day, Montalbán is in very malicious mood. Most of his plays have been very successful, he says, but he has never boosted them before their performance. «Aora dizē que se vsa otra cosa.» He has never envied the good fortune of others; but now he feels compelled, despite his innate modesty, to point out just four things :

«La primera, que no es vn hombre grande, porque el lo piense, ni lo digan sus apassionados, sino porque lo sea, y lo sientan assi los entendidos. La segunda, la fortuna no consiste en tenerla, sino en merecerla, por lo vno es virtud, y lo otro suele ser diligencia. La tercera, que no es bueno todo lo que parece lo es; porque como ay alquimistas que fingen oro cō el arte, ay Poetas que engañan el entendimiento con filaterias. Y la vltima, que es locura hazer milagros con quien acertò vna vez, auiendo errado otra. Y mas quando no se hazen con los que aciertan siempre.»

But he is consoled by the thought that, sooner or later, justice will always be done -as in the dispute of Ajax and Ulysses over the arms of Achilles. «La aplicacion esta tan clara, que me escusa de explicar el misterio de su moralidad» (fols. 102-104).

In the dedication of the Fifth Day, he praises his friend Diego Niseno for having remained humble despite the international popularity of his works; but he adds: «O que buena ocasion se me auia venido à las manos, para dezir alguna cosa de aquellos, que sin auer escrito ninguna que importe, no caben en el lugar, con ser tan grande. Pero dexemoslos con su desdicha, que harta vengança es para nosotros saber, que los cuerdos los conocen, y los doctos se burlan dellos» (fols. 181-183). Again it is clear that he may have the upstart Villaizán in mind.

Quevedo pointed out in Perinola a veiled attack on Villaizán in Montalbán's Discurso de todos los Artes (Sixth Day); for Montalbán, whose father was of course a bookseller whereas Villaizán's was an apothecary, extols the arte de los libreros there as not mechanical but noble, only to write in the very next paragraph of the arte de los boticarios:

[...]Y su arte aun necessaria y honrosa, es mecanica, como prueua con evidencia el Doctor Pedro Fernandez54; por su ocupaciō, como ministros que son de los Medicos, no consiste en especular de las yeruas simples, y cōpuestos, esta es preuenciō del Medico, sino en aparejar con su manifatura lo les ordenan, es [...]

He concluded the paragraph, moreover :

[...]... y esto bien se ve, estriua mas en el trabajo del cuerpo, que no en desvelo de espíritu.

(fol. 257v)

Quevedo, ever ready to remind us of Montalbán's converso ancestry, said that his intention was «sin acordarse de la tienda de su padre y los antecesores de la tienda, cargar la sátira sobre la botica, y examinar cuál es más calidad y mejor.»⁵⁵

The only direct references to Villaizán in Para todos occur in the Memoria de los que escriben comedias en Castilla solamente, where his name is merely one in a list (fol. 359r), and in the Indice de los ingenios de Madrid, where the entry reads: «Don Geronimo de Villaiçan y Garcès. Letrado famoso, y Poeta luzidissimo, por ser su ingenio como el Manà, que sabe a todo lo que quiere, y de quien se puede dezir con verdad, que la Fortuna y el Merecimiento se estan dando las manos: ha escrito fuera de otros versos a varios assuntos, tres Comedias con el mayor aplauso que jamas se ha visto.» Quevedo found one phrase of this malicious, for he wrote: «Por decirle algo de la botica, dice que sus obras saben al Maná; pero sin temer que el Villaizan podía, si fuera como el dotor, con mayor agudeza decir: "Montalbán, el maná mejor es venderle en poblado que cogerle en el desierto."»⁵⁶ Montalbán may have had no such intention, for he had used the identical phrase some six years earlier, in praise of his idol Lope⁵⁷. On the other hand, he may have meant to imply that Villaizán, if a competent imitator, was insipidly unoriginal; and in the rest of his faint praise he may have been hinting once again at a contrast between Villaizán's sudden rise to favour and the scantiness of his published works, admitting that Villaizán's plays had been applauded to avoid saying that they were well written.

We cannot agree with Restori that in Para todos no irony against Villaizán was intended⁵⁸. Montalbán seems to have taken the opportunities its publication offered to «decir mal», consistently if obliquely, of Villaizán and his allies in their rivalry. But that rivalry was also, surely, the book's immediate raison d'être. La más constante mujer must have been a success in performance, as Montalbán claimed in Para todos and as the appearance of a burlesque version⁵⁹, of translations into Italian⁶⁰ and Dutch⁶¹, and of at least fifteen editions of the play (independent of Para todos) would suggest⁶². But that success cannot have been such that Montalbán was now unquestionably victorious over Villaizán; so much is clear from Pedro de la Peña's sonnets and from the bitterness and disillusionment betrayed throughout Para todos in Montalbán's allusions to the theatre. He had still to defend his reputation as the most promising of a new generation of writers, against this even younger challenger -not to mention friendlier rivals of longer standing, like Pedro Calderón. He turned his back therefore, temporarily, on the writing of new plays⁶³, and determined to discountenance all his competitors by demonstrating in print his brilliance not only as a dramatist but in a variety of other rôles- as a poet, a novelist, a scholar. He embarked on the compilation of Para todos, and spared no effort until it was completed to his satisfaction. In the dedication of the Fourth Day, he writes :

«Como los Principes quando estan empeñados, se retiran a vna aldea para escusar los gastos de la Corte: assi los Poetas quādo se ven desvalidos, se acogē a la Imprenta, para ahorrarse de las pesadumbres de los Teatros. Pero [...] lo que elegi por aliuio, me ha redundado en mayor desvelo. Bien pudiera dezir (como otros hazen) le trazè de prisa, que le di a la estampa sin trabajo y que le hize sin borrar ninguna palabra; pero soy muy honrado para mentir, y muy modesto para desvanecerme. Y assi digo, que he gastado medio año en su disposicion. Que me ha costado inmenso estudio su variedad, y que para no erralle, le he borrado infinitas vezes»

(fols. 138-139).

When it was finished, he could point to it, like an opositor thumping down a thesis and sneering at his opponents' poverty of publications, as a monument to his own ability, versatility, and learning. In the dedication of the Sixth Day, he could say of the discourses there that he had written them

«el año passado, solo por lisongear a los que se ofendian de mis aciertos en otras materias: si bien como los caminantes deuen al confuso ladrar de los perros el acierto de su camino, assi puedo dezir deuo a los chismes, y a las embidias, la honra fixa que me ha de dar el presente libro. Yo no le asseguro de bueno, ni tampoco quiero dezir es malo: porque alabarle, fuera vanidad, y vituperarle, locura. Pero lo que me atrevo a assegurar, es, que he escrito en èl quanto he sabido, y quanto he podido.»

(fols. 241-242)

After the publication of Para todos Montalbán's bitterness towards Villaizán may well have abated, and before the latter's death in 1633 a reconciliation may have been effected by the various friends they must have had in common; for both were liked and admired by Lope and by José Pellicer, and both contributed poems to each of at least four works published in 1631 and 1632⁶⁴. In the edition of Para todos of Huesca, 1633, and probably at Montalbán's own direction, the passage I have quoted concerning the arte de los boticarios was amended so that it now began: «[...] Y su arte es necessaria, y honrosa, y consiste en aparejar con su manifatura lo les ordenan los Medicos, es [...]». And in the edition of Madrid, 1633⁶⁵, and all later ones, not only did this amendment remain, but the last nineteen words of the offending paragraph were also suppressed⁶⁶. In 1634, moreover, we find Montalbán contributing to the preliminaries of Pedro Gutierrez de Arévalo's Práctica de boticarios -which also included an introductory epistle by Villaizán's father Diego- a poem in praise of the author and his art.

Meanwhile Para todos had brought Montalbán the honour he had expected; although Perinola and the ensuring polemics no doubt brought fresh disillusionment. The added strain of this new rivalry, following closely on the crisis which had produced Para todos, must have been among the causes of the mental affliction which was soon to overtake him and bring him to an early grave. Nevertheless he could be proud of his popular Para todos; to the end we find him promising a second part⁶⁷, discussing the editions which his book has already seen⁶⁸, and proposing further emendations in the next⁶⁹. Nor was his pride entirely unjustified. Para todos, from its pretentious title to the pious Si quid dictum [...] of its close, is a work worthy, with all its oddities, of an unquiet but always colourful epoch, and an erratic but always exuberant author⁷⁰.