(Sp.: ‘act’, ‘judicial proceeding’, ‘decree’.).
A Spanish dramatic work that developed from medieval liturgical drama. The earliest autos were religious or allegorical plays with a clear didactic or exemplary purpose, and the term was used in a broader sense in the late 15th century and into the 16th to designate one of many kinds of play, secular or religious in nature. As with the farsa and égloga, lyric poetry and songs were included in the performance of autos by Gil Vicente, Lucas Fernández and Juan del Encina, in very stylized ways. Typically an auto or a farsa would end with a villancico, though some incorporated songs more directly into the drama.
The auto sacramentale was an allegorical religious play on the Eucharist performed during or as an adjunct to public, outdoor processions for Corpus Christi from the 16th to 18th centuries. The best known and historically most important examples of this genre are those by Pedro Calderón de la Barca written for performance at the city of Madrid's annual Corpus Christi celebrations. From 1648 until his death in 1681, Calderón supplied the texts (as well as instructions for staging and costumes) for these open-air performances. His autos are one-act plays with songs, preceded by a loa (prologue) and usually followed by a short comic skit or danced number such as an entremés or baile. Written in polymetric verse, they are elegant examples of Counter-Reformation religious instruction through very beautiful Baroque poetry, song and spectacle. A number of Calderón's autos use classical mythology as the basis for religious allegory. They were performed with elaborate scenery and special effects on special platforms on wheels (carros), though they became so popular that many were then performed for weeks on end in the public theatres after the Corpus festival. Around the several performances of the autos during the octave of Corpus (usually two autos were performed each year), special danced entertainments were contracted (danzas de espadas, de cascabeles etc.) and performed by specialists. Instrumental and vocal music of many sorts (songs, sections of recitative, choruses, instrumental pieces) were brought into the autos as important audible props and for the direct expression of special characters. Many of the composers employed by the royal chapels in Madrid, such as Juan Hidalgo, Cristóbal Galán and others, composed songs for the autos of Calderón, as did theatrical musicians of the acting troupes such as Juan Serqueira de Lima, Manuel de Villaflor and José Peyró.
Performances of Calderón's autos sacramentales continued after his death in 1681, though a few other writers also contributed to the development of the repertory, most notably Francisco de Bances Candamo and Antonio de Zamora in Madrid. The standard form established by Calderón seems to have been continued in the 18th century, although the tradition died out and the genre had outlived its function by about the middle of the century. A royal decree of 1765, which ran counter to the wishes of many in the ecclesiastical community, prohibited the further performances of the autos sacramentales; before then they had been widely performed in Spain and in the Hispanic New World, with great acclaim.
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M. Latorre y Badillo: ‘Representación de los autos sacramentales en el periodo de su mayor florecimiento (1620–81)’, Revista de archivos, bibliotecas y museos, xxv (1911), 189–211; xxvi (1912), 235–62
M.N. Hamilton: Music in Eighteenth Century Spain (Urbana, IL, 1937/R)
A. Salazar: ‘Music in the Primitive Spanish Theatre before Lope de Vega’, PAMS 1938, 94–108
G. Chase: ‘Origins of the Lyric Theater in Spain’, MQ, xxv (1939), 292–305
M. Bataillon: ‘Essai d'explication de l'“auto sacramental”’, Bulletin hispanique, xlii (1940), 193–212
A.A. Parker: The Allegorical Drama of Calderón (Oxford, 1943)
J. Sage: ‘Calderón y la música teatral’, Bulletin hispanique, lviii (1956), 275–300
N.D. Shergold and J.E. Varey: Los autos sacramentales en Madrid en la época de Calderón, 1637–81 (Madrid, 1961)
J. Díaz and J. Alonso Puga: Autos de navida en León y Castilla (León, 1983)
J.M. Díez Borque: ‘Teatro y fiesta en el barroco español: el auto sacramental de Calderón y el público, funciones del texto cantado’, Cuadernos hispanoamericanos, no.386 (1983), 606–42
LOUISE K. STEIN