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outside the control of the characters -other
people, social pressures, chance events -- also play an important and
even crucial part in the shaping of events.
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26
See C. F. A. van Dam, Lope de Vega, El castigo sin venganza , both editions.
27
See A. A. Parker, The Approach to the Spanish Drama of the Golden Age ( London, 1957), 15-16. A revised version, "The Spanish Drama of the
Golden Age: A Method of Analysis and Interpretation", appeared in Eric
Bentley (ed.), The Great Playwrights: Twenty-five Plays with
Commentaries by Critics and Scholars ( New York, 1970), 697-707.
28
Jones, El castigo sin venganza , 16-17.
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It cannot be denied that to a considerable degree each of the major
characters' lives is influenced by other people to the point where
their own choices count for little. The Duke, having sought to avoid
marriage, is forced into it by his subjects, who will not accept the
illegitimate Federico as his heir. Entrapment in a marriage he does not
want intensifies his resolve to return to his old ways and, in turn,
creates a set of circumstances whose repercussions cannot be avoided.
Again, on a social level the Duke cannot escape the demands of the
honour code once his honour has been offended. As for Federico, he is
from the outset unable to escape the consequences of his illegitimate
status, for he is rejected by the Duke's subjects as heir to his
possessions, and feels intensely the bitterness attendant on his
possible disinheritance. Later he seems powerless to escape Casandra's
hold upon him, and when their affair becomes known to the Duke, he is
trapped by the implacable demands of honour and vengeance. Casandra is
the pawn both of her father and her husband, pressurized by the
former into a marriage she does not want and, as a wife, cast aside by a
man who prefers women of the streets. In the affair with Federico she
then becomes the prisoner of her own powerful emotions, and finally,
like Federico, the victim of honour's tyranny. By the end of the play
the three principal characters are manipulated by forces and pressures
stronger than themselves.
    Circumstance is another important shaping factor in their lives. When
Casandra and Federico first meet -- when her carriage becomes stuck in
the ford -- they do so in total ignorance of each other's identity,
which means that their attraction to each other is spontaneous and
uninhibited by those constraints which a knowledge of their true
relationship would impose upon them. First impressions are indeed
powerful. Again, the Duke's unexpected departure from home comes at
the crucial moment when Casandra, though offended by the Duke's
neglect of her, has so far succeeded in containing her feelings for her
stepson. The Duke's sudden absence literally throws the young couple
into each other's arms and pushes them further along the path which
leads to their tragic destiny.
    In
short, the argument which suggests that the outcome of Lope's tragedy
is determined by the moral defects and wrongdoing of the principal
characters is a very narrow one, and can be countered, or at least
modified, by an approach to the play which emphasizes
    -xxx-

other factors outside the control of those characters. They may
indeed have to make moral choices, but to make the right choice in the
circumstances in which they find themselves would be a course of
action better suited to saints than ordinary human beings. It is the
interplay of individual motives and external events which therefore
makes Punishment Without Revenge the great and complex play that it
is, for the tragic pattern which it reveals is in many ways that of
Greek and Shakespearean tragedy. 29
    It is clear from what has been said already that in this play Lope
created his most rounded and fascinating characters. The Duke,
Casandra, and Federico develop and change in the light of the
circumstances in which they find themselves. Their complexity is