[541] Of these five volumes, containing fifty-nine plays, and a number of entremeses and ballads, whose titles are given in Aribau’s Biblioteca, (Madrid, 1848, Tom. V. p. xxxvi.), I have never seen but four, and have been able with difficulty to collect between thirty and forty separate plays. Their author says, however, in the Preface to his “Cigarrales de Toledo,” (1624), that he had written three hundred; and I believe about eighty have been printed.

[542] There are some details in this part of Lope’s play, such as the mention of a walking stone statue, which leave no doubt in my mind that Tirso de Molina used it. Lope’s play is in the twenty-fourth volume of his Comedias (Zaragoza, 1632); but it is one of his dramas that have continued to be reprinted and read.

[543] For the way in which this truly Spanish fiction was spread through Italy to France, and then, by means of Molière, throughout the rest of Europe, see Parfaicts, “Histoire du Théatre François” (Paris, 12mo, Tom. VIII., 1746, p. 255; Tom. IX., 1746, pp. 3 and 343; and Tom. X., 1747, p. 420); and Cailhava, “Art de la Comédie” (Paris, 1786, 8vo, Tom. II. p. 175). Shadwell’s “Libertine” (1676) is substantially the same story, with added atrocities; and, if I mistake not, is the foundation of the short drama which has often been acted on the American stage. Shadwell’s own play is too gross to be tolerated anywhere now-a-days, and besides has no literary merit.

[544] That the popularity of the mere fiction of Don Juan has been preserved in Spain may be seen from the many recent versions of it; and especially from the two plays of “Don Juan Tenorio,” by Zorrilla, (1844), and his two poems, “El Desafío del Diablo,” and “Un Testigo de Bronce,” (1845), hardly less dramatic than the plays that had preceded them.

[545] Crónica de D. Juan el Segundo, ad ann.

[546] The “Vergonzoso en Palacio” was printed as early as 1624, in the “Cigarrales de Toledo,” (Madrid, 1624, 4to, p. 100), and took its name, I suppose, from a Spanish proverb, “Mozo vergonzoso no es para palacio.”

[547] “Todo es dar en una Cosa.”

[548] “Por el Sotano y el Torno.”

[549] “Escarmientos para Cuerdos.”

[550] Cigarrales de Toledo, 1624, pp. 183-188.

[551] The notices of Mira de Mescua, or Amescua, as he is sometimes called, are scattered like his works. He is mentioned in Roxas, “Viage” (1602); and I have his “Desgraciada Raquel,” both in a printed copy, where it is attributed to Diamante, and in an autograph MS., where it is sadly cut up to suit the ecclesiastical censors, whose permission to represent it is dated April 10th, 1635. Guevara indicates his birthplace and ecclesiastical office in the “Diablo Cojuelo,” Tranco VI. Antonio (Bib. Nov., ad verb.) gives him extravagant praise, and says that his dramas were collected and published together. But this, I believe, is a mistake. Like his shorter poems, they can be found only separate, or in collections made for other purposes. See also, in relation to Mira de Mescua, Montalvan, Para Todos, the Catalogue at the end; and Pellicer, Biblioteca, Tom. I. p. 89. The story on which the “Raquel” is founded is a fiction, and therefore need not so much have disturbed the censors of the theatre. (Castro, Crónica de Sancho el Deseado, Alonso el Octavo, etc., Madrid, 1665, folio, pp. 90, etc.) Two autos by Mira de Mescua are to be found in “Navidad y Corpus Christi Festejados,” Madrid, 1664, 4to.

[552] Antonio, Bib. Nova, Tom. I. p. 821. His dramatic works which I possess are “Doce Autos Sacramentales y dos Comedias Divinas,” por el Maestro Joseph de Valdivielso, Toledo, 1622, 4to, 183 leaves. Compare the old ballad, “Ya cabalga Diego Ordoñez,” which can be traced to the Romancero of 1550-1555, with the “Crónica del Cid,” c. 66, and the “Cautivos Libres,” f. 25. a. of the Doce Autos. It will show how the old ballads rung in the ears of all men, and penetrated everywhere into Spanish poetry. There is a nacimiento of Valdivielso in the “Navidad y Corpus Christi,” mentioned in the preceding note; but it is very slight and poor.

[553] His works were not collected till long after his death, which happened in 1644, and were then printed from a MS. found in the library of the Archbishop of Lisbon, Luis de Souza, under the affected title, “El Fenix Castellano, D. Antonio de Mendoza, renascido,” etc. (Lisboa, 1690, 4to). The only notices of consequence that I find of him are in Montalvan’s “Para Todos,” and in Antonio, Bib. Nova, where he is called Antonio Hurtado de Mendoza; probably a mistake, for he does not seem to have belonged to the old Santillana family. A second edition of his works, with trifling additions, appeared at Madrid in 1728, 4to.

[554] Alarcon seems, in consequence of these remonstrances, or perhaps in consequence of the temper in which they were made, to have drawn upon himself a series of attacks, from the poets of the time, Góngora, Lope de Vega, Mendoza, Montalvan, and others. See Puibusque, Histoire Comparée des Littératures Espagnole et Française, 2 tom., 8vo, Paris, 1843, Tom. II. pp. 155-164, and 430-437;—a book written with much taste and knowledge of the subject to which it relates. It gained the prize of 1842.

[555] Repertorio Americano, Tom. III. p. 61, Tom. IV. p. 93; Denis, Chroniques de l’Espagne, Paris, 1839, 8vo, Tom. II. p. 231; Comedias Escogidas, Tom. XXVIII., 1667, p. 131. Corneille’s opinion of the “Verdad Sospechosa,” which is often misquoted, is to be found in his “Examen du Menteur.” I will only add, in relation to Alarcon, that, in “Nunca mucho costó poco,” he has given us the character of an imperious old nurse, which is well drawn, and made effective by the use of picturesque, but antiquated, words and phrases.

[556] The plays of these authors are found in the large collection entitled “Comedias Escogidas,” Madrid, 1652-1704, 4to, with the exception of those of Sanchez and Villaizan, which I possess separate. Of Belmonte, there are eleven in the collection, and of Godinez, five. Those of Miguel Sanchez, who was very famous in his time, and obtained the addition to his name of El Divino, are nearly all lost.

[557] The plays of Salas Barbadillo, viz., “Victoria de España y Francia,” and “El Galan Tramposo y Pobre,” are in his “Coronas del Parnaso,” left for publication at his death, but not printed till 1635, Madrid, 12mo.

[558] It is called “El Mayorazgo,” and is found with its loa at the end of the author’s “Alivios de Casandra,” 1640.

[559] These are, “Las Firmezas de Isabela,” “El Doctor Carlino,” and “La Comedia Venatoria,”—the last two unfinished, and the very last allegorical.

[560] The play written to please the Count Duke was by Quevedo and Antonio de Mendoza, and was entitled “Quien mas miente medra mas,”—He that lies most will rise most. (C. Pellicer, Orígen del Teatro, Tom. I. p. 177.) This play is lost, unless, as I suspect, it is the “Empeños del Mentir” that occurs in Mendoza’s Works, 1690, pp. 254-296. There are also four entremeses of Quevedo in his Works, 1791, Vol. IX.

[561] Philip IV. was a lover of letters. Translations of Francesco Guicciardini’s “Wars in Italy,” and of the “Description of the Low Countries,” by his nephew, Luigi Guicciardini, made by him, and preceded by a well-written Prólogo, are said to be in the National Library at Madrid. (C. Pellicer, Orígen, Tom. I. p. 162; Huerta, Teatro Hespañol, Madrid, 1785, 12mo, Parte I., Tom. III. p. 159; and Ochoa, Teatro, Paris, 1838, 8vo, Tom. V. p. 98.) “King Henry the Feeble” is also among the plays most confidently ascribed to Philip IV., who is said to have often joined in improvisating dramas, an amusement well known at the court of Madrid, and at the hardly less splendid court of the Count de Lemos at Naples. C. Pellicer, Teatro, Tom. I. p. 163, and J. A. Pellicer, Bib. de Traductores, Tom. I. pp. 90-92, where a curious account, already referred to, is given of one of these Neapolitan exhibitions, by Estrada, who witnessed it.

[562] C. Pellicer, Orígen, Tom. I. p. 184, note; Suplemento al Índice, etc., 1805; and an excellent article by Louis de Vieil Castel, in the Revue des Deux Mondes, July 15, 1840. To these should be added the pleasant description given by Blanco White, in his admirable “Doblado’s Letters,” (1822, pp. 163-169), of a representation he himself witnessed of the “Diablo Predicador,” in the court-yard of a poor inn, where a cow-house served for the theatre, or rather the stage, and the spectators, who paid less than twopence apiece for their places, sat in the open air, under a bright, starry sky.

[563] El Pinciano, Filosofía Antigua Poética, Madrid, 1596, 4to, p. 381, etc.; Andres Rey de Artieda, Discursos, etc., de Artemidoro, Çaragoça, 1605, 4to, f. 87; C. de Mesa, Rimas, Madrid, 1611, 12mo, ff. 94, 145, 218, and his Pompeyo, Madrid, 1618, 12mo, with its Dedicatoria; Cascales, Tablas Poéticas, Murcia, 1616, 4to, Parte II.; C. S. de Figueroa, Pasagero, Madrid, 1617, 12mo, Alivio tercero; Est. M. de Villegas, Eróticas, Najera, 1617, 4to, Segunda Parte, f. 27; Los Argensolas, Rimas, Zaragoza, 1634, 4to, p. 447. I have arranged them according to their dates, because, in this case, the order of time is important, and because it should be noticed that all come within the period of Lope’s success as a dramatist.

[564] D. Quixote, ed. Clemencin, Tom. III. p. 402, note.

[565] Pellicer, Bib. de Traductores, Tom. I. p. 11.

[566] As a set-off to this alleged religious effect of the comedias de santos, we have, in the Address that opens the “Tratado de las Comedias,” (1618), by Bisbe y Vidal, an account of a young girl who was permitted to see the representation of the “Conversion of Mary Magdalen” several times, as an act of devotion, and ended her visits to the theatre by falling in love with the actor that personated the Saviour, and running off with him, or rather following him to Madrid.

[567] The account, however, was sometimes the other way. Bisbe y Vidal (f. 98) says that the hospitals made such efforts to sustain the theatres, in order to get an income from them afterwards, that they themselves were sometimes impoverished by the speculations they ventured to make; and adds, that in his time (c. 1618) there was a person alive, who, as a magistrate of Valencia, had been the means of such losses to the hospital of that city, through its investments and advances for the theatre, that he had entered a religious house, and given his whole fortune to the hospital, to make up for the injury he had done it.

[568] Roxas (1602) gives an amusing account of the nicknames and resources of eight different kinds of strolling companies of actors, beginning with the bululu, which boasted of but one person, and going up to the full compañía, which was required to have seventeen. (Viage, Madrid, 1614, 12mo, ff. 51-53.) These nicknames and distinctions were long known in Spain. Four of them occur in “Estebanillo Gonzalez,” 1646, c. 6.

[569] On the whole subject of the contest between the Church and the theatre, and the success of Lope and his school, see C. Pellicer, Orígen, Tom. I. pp. 118-122, and 142-157; Don Quixote, ed. J. A. Pellicer, Parte II., c. 11, note; Roxas, Viage, 1614, passim (f. 66, implying that he wrote in 1602); Montalvan, Para Todos, 1661, p. 543; Lope de Vega, Obras Sueltas, Tom. XXI. p. 66; and many other parts of Vols. XX. and XXI.;—all showing the triumph of Lope and his school. A letter of Francisco Cascales to Lope de Vega, published in 1634, in defence of plays and their representation, is the third in the second decade of his Epistles; but it goes on the untenable ground, that the plays then represented were liable to no objection on the score of morals.

[570] There has been some discussion, and a general error, about the date of Calderon’s birth; but in a rare book, entitled “Obelisco Fúnebre,” published in his honor, by his friend Gaspar Augustin de Lara, (Madrid, 1684, 4to), written immediately after Calderon’s death, it is distinctly stated, on the authority of Calderon himself, that he was born Jan. 17th, 1600. This settles all doubts. The certificate of baptism given in Baena, “Hijos de Madrid,” Tom. IV. p. 228, only says that he was baptized Feb. 14th, 1600; but why that ceremony, contrary to custom, was so long delayed, or why a person in the position of Vera Tassis y Villarroel, who, like Lara, was a friend of Calderon, should have placed the poet’s birth on January 1st, we cannot now even conjecture.

[571] See the learned genealogical introduction to the “Obelisco Fúnebre,” just cited. The name of Calderon, as its author tells us, came into the family in the thirteenth century, when one of its number, being prematurely born, was supposed to be dead, but was ascertained to be alive by being unceremoniously thrown into a caldron—calderon—of warm water. As he proved to be a great man, and was much favored by St. Ferdinand and Alfonso the Wise, his nickname became a name of honor, and five caldrons were, from that time, borne in the family arms. The additional surname of Barca came in later, with an estate—solar—of one of the house, who afterwards perished, fighting against the Moors; in consequence of which, a castle, a gauntlet, and the motto, Por la fé moriré, were added to their escutcheon, which, thus arranged, constituted the not inappropriate arms of the poet in the seventeenth century.

[572] See the notice of Calderon’s father in Baena, Tom. I. p. 305; that of Calderon himself, Tom. IV. p. 228; and that of Lope de Vega, Tom. III. p. 350; but, especially, see the different facts about Calderon scattered through the dull prose introduction to the “Obelisco Fúnebre,” and its still more dull poetry. The biographical sketch of him by his friend Vera Tassis y Villarroel, originally prefixed to the fifth volume of his Comedias, and to be found in the first volume of the editions since, is formal, pedantic, and unsatisfactory, like most notices of the old Spanish authors.

[573] His sonnet for this occasion is in Lope de Vega, Obras Sueltas, Tom. XI. p. 432; and his octavas are at p. 491. Both are respectable for a youth of twenty. The praises of Lope, which are unmeaning, are at p. 593 of the same volume. Who obtained the prizes at this festival of 1620 is not known.

[574] The different pieces offered by Calderon for the festival of May 17, 1622, are in Lope de Vega, Obras Sueltas, Tom. XII. pp. 181, 239, 303, 363, 384. Speaking of them, Lope (p. 413) says, a prize was given to “Don Pedro Calderon, who, in his tender years, earns the laurels which time is wont to produce only with hoary hairs.” The six or eight poems offered by Calderon at these two poetical joustings are valuable, not only as being the oldest of his works that remain to us, but as being almost the only specimens of his verse that we have, except his dramas. Cervantes, in his Don Quixote, intimates, that, at these poetical contests, the first prize was given from personal favor, or from regard to the rank of the aspirant, and the second with reference only to the merit of the poem presented. (Parte II. c. 18.) Calderon took, on this occasion, only the third prize for a cancion; the first being given to Lope, and the second to Zarate.

[575] Silva VII.

[576] Para Todos, ed. 1661, pp. 539, 540. But these sketches were prepared in 1632.

[577] It has been said that Calderon has given to none of his dramas the title Vera Tassis assigns to this one, viz., “Certámen de Amor y Zelos.” But this is a mistake. No play with this precise title is to be found among his printed works; but it is the last but one in the list of his plays furnished by Calderon himself to the Duke of Veraguas, in 1680.

[578] “He knew how,” says Augustin de Lara, “to unite, by humility and prudence, the duties of an obedient child and a loving father.”

[579] “Murió sin Mecenas.” Aprobacion to the “Obelisco,” dated Oct. 30th, 1683. All that relates to Calderon in this very rare volume is important, because it comes from a friend, and was written,—at least the poetical part of it,—as the author tells us, within fifty-three days after Calderon’s death.

[580] “Estava un auto entonces en los fines, como su autor.” (Obelisco, Canto I., st. 22. See also a sonnet at the end of the volume.) Solís, the historian, in one of his letters, says, “Our friend Don Pedro Calderon is just dead, and went off, as they say the swan does, singing; for he did all he could, even when he was in immediate danger, to finish the second auto for the Corpus. But, after all, he went through only a little more than half of it, and it has been finished in some way or other by Don Melchior de Leon.” (Cartas de N. Antonio y A. Solís, publicadas por Mayans y Siscar, Leon de Francia, 1733, 12mo, p. 75.) I cite three contemporary notices of so small a fact, to show how much consequence was attached to every thing regarding Calderon and his autos.

[581] Lara, in his “Advertencias,” speaks of “the funeral eulogies printed in Valencia.” Vera Tassis mentions them also, without adding that they were printed. A copy of them would be very interesting, as they were the work of “the illustrious gentlemen” of the household of the Duke of Veraguas, Calderon’s friend. The substance of the poet’s will is given in the “Obelisco,” Cant. I., st. 32, 33.

[582] An account of the first monument and its inscription is to be found in Baena, Tom. IV. p. 231; and an account of the removal of the poet’s ashes to the convent of “Our Lady of Atocha” is in the Foreign Quarterly Review, April, 1841, p. 227. An attempt to do still further honor to the memory of Calderon was made by the publication of a life of him, and of poems in his honor by Zamacola, Zorilla, Hartzenbusch, etc., in a folio pamphlet, Madrid, 1840, as well as by a subscription.

[583] His fine capacious forehead is noticed by his eulogist, and is obvious in the print of 1684, which little resembles the copies made from it by later engravers:—

[584] Prólogo to the “Obelisco.”

[585] The account of the entrance of the new queen into Madrid, in 1649, written by Calderon, was indeed printed; but it was under the name of Lorenço Ramirez de Prado, who, assisted by Calderon, arranged the festivities of the occasion.

[586] The unpublished works of Calderon, as enumerated by Vera Tassis, Baena, and Lara, are:—

(1.) “Discurso de los Quatro Novísimos”; or what, in the technics of his theology, are called the four last things to be thought upon by man: viz., Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell. Lara says Calderon read him three hundred octave stanzas of it, and proposed to complete it in one hundred more. It is, no doubt, lost.

(2.) “Tratado defendiendo la Nobleza de la Pintura.”

(3.) “Otro tratado, Defensa de la Comedia.”

(4.) “Otro tratado, sobre el Diluvio General.” These three tratados were probably poems, like the “Discurso.” At least, that on the Deluge is mentioned as such by Montalvan and by Lara.

(5.) “Lágrimas, que vierte un Alma arrepentida á la Hora de la Muerte.” This, however, is not unpublished, though so announced by Vera Tassis. It is a little poem in the ballad measure, which I detected first in a singular volume, where probably it first appeared, entitled “Avisos para la Muerte, escritos por algunos Ingenios de España, á la Devocion de Bernardo de Obiedo, Secretario de su Majestad, etc., publicados por D. Luis Arellano,” Valencia, 1634, 18mo, 90 leaves; reprinted, Zaragoza, 1648, and often besides. It consists of the contributions of thirty poets, among whom are no less personages than Luis Vélez de Guevara, Juan Perez de Montalvan, and Lope de Vega. The burden of Calderon’s poem, which is given with his name attached to it, is “O dulce Jesus mio, no entres, Señor, con vuestro siervo en juicio!” The two following stanzas are a favorable specimen of the whole:—

The whole of the little volume in which it occurs serves curiously to illustrate Spanish manners, in an age when a minister of state sought spiritual comfort by such means and in such sources.

[587] Lara and Vera Tassis, both personal friends of Calderon, speak of the number of these miscellanies as very great.

[588] There were four volumes in all, and Calderon, in his Preface to the Autos, 1676, seems to admit their genuineness, though he abstains, with apparent caution, from directly declaring it, lest he should seem to imply that their publication had ever been authorized by him.

[589] “All men well know,” says Lara, “that Don Pedro never sent any of his comedias to the press, and that those which were printed were printed against his will.” Obelisco, Prólogo.

[590] The earliest of these fraudulent publications of Calderon’s plays that I have seen is in the very rare collection of “Comedias compuestas por Diferentes Autores,” Tom. XXV., Zaragoza, 1633, 4to, where is Calderon’s “Astrólogo Fingido,” given with a recklessness as to omissions and changes that is the more remarkable, because Escuer, who published the volume, makes great professions of his editorial care and faithfulness. (See f. 191. b.) In the larger collection of Comedias, in forty-eight volumes, begun in 1652, there are fifty-three plays attributed, in whole or in part, to Calderon, some of which are certainly not his, and all of them, so far as I have examined, scandalously corrupted in their text. All of them, too, were printed as early as 1679; that is, two years before Calderon’s death, and therefore before there was sufficient authority for publishing any one of them.

[591] Probably several more may be added to the list of dramas that are attributed to Calderon, and yet are not his. I have observed one, entitled “El Garrote mas bien dado,” in “El Mejor de los Mejores Libros de Comedias Nuevas,” (Madrid, 1653, 4to), where it is inserted with others that are certainly genuine.

[592] This correspondence, so honorable to Calderon, as well as to the head of the family of Columbus, who signs himself proudly, El Almirante Duque,—as Columbus himself had required his descendants always to sign themselves, (Navarrete, Tom. II. p. 229),—is to be found in the “Obelisco,” and again in Huerta, “Teatro Hespañol” (Madrid, 1785, 12mo, Parte II. Tom. III.). The complaints of Calderon about the booksellers are very bitter, as well they might be; for in 1676, in his Preface to his Autos, he says that their frauds took away from the hospitals and other charities—which yet received only a small part of the profits of the theatre—no less than twenty-six thousand ducats annually.

[593] All the loas, however, are not Calderon’s; but it is no longer possible to determine which are not so. “No son todas suyas” is the phrase applied to them in the Prólogo of the edition of 1717.

[594] Vera Tassis tells us, indeed, in his Life of Calderon, that Calderon wrote a hundred saynetes, or short farces; about a hundred autos sacramentales; two hundred loas; and more than one hundred and twenty comedias. But he collected for his edition (Madrid, 1682-91, 9 tom., 4to) only the comedias mentioned in the text, and a few more, probably twelve, intended for an additional volume that never was printed. Nor do any more appear in the edition by Apontes, Madrid, 1760-63, 11 tom., 4to; nor in the more correct one published at Leipzig in 1827-30, 4 bände, 8vo, by J. J. Keil, an accomplished Spanish scholar of that city. It is probable, therefore, that their number will not hereafter be much increased. And yet we know the names of nine plays, recognized by Calderon himself, which are not in any of these collections; and Vera Tassis gives us the names of eight more, in which he says, Calderon, after the fashion of his time, wrote a single act. Some of these ought to be recovered. But though we should be curious to see any of them, we should be more curious, considering how happy Calderon is in many of his graciosos, to see some of the hundred saynetes Vera Tassis mentions, of which not one is known to be extant, though the titles of six or seven are given in Huerta’s catalogue. The autos, being the property of the city of Madrid, and annually represented, were not permitted to be printed for a long time. (Lara, Prólogo.) They were first published in 1717, in 6 volumes, 4to, and they fill the same number of volumes in the edition of Madrid, 1759-60, 4to. These, however, are all the editions of Calderon’s dramatic works, except a sort of counterfeit of that of Vera Tassis, printed at Madrid in 1726, and the selections and single plays printed from time to time both in Spain and in other countries. Two, however, have been undertaken lately in Spain, (1846), and one in Havana, (1840), but probably none of them will be finished. See notices of Calderon, by F. W. V. Schmidt, in the Wiener Jahrbücher der Literatur, Bände XVII., XVIII., and XIX., 1822, to which I am much indebted, and which deserve to be printed separately, and preserved.

[595] Roxas, Viage Entretenido, 1614, ff. 51, 52, and many other places.

[596] Don Quixote, ed. Pellicer, Parte II. c. 11, with the notes.

[597] Voyage d’Espagne, Cologne, 1667, 18mo, with Barbier, Dictionnaire d’Anonymes, Paris, 1824, 8vo, No. 19,281. The auto which the Dutch traveller saw was, no doubt, one of Calderon’s; since Calderon then, and for a long time before and after, furnished the autos for the city of Madrid. Madame d’Aulnoy describes the same gorgeous procession as she saw it in 1679, (Voyage, ed. 1693, Tom. III. pp. 52-55), with the impertinent auto, as she calls it, that was performed that year.

[598] La Verdad en el Potro, Madrid, 1686, 12mo, pp. 291, 292. The Dutch traveller had heard the same story, but tells it less well. (Voyage, p. 121.) The Tarasca was no doubt excessively ugly. Montalvan (Comedias, Madrid, 4to, 1638, f. 13) alludes to it for its monstrous deformity.

[599] C. Pellicer, Orígen de las Comedias, 1804, Tom. I. p. 258.

[600] Quevedo, Obras, 1791, Tom. I. p. 386.

[601] It is in the fourth volume of the edition printed at Madrid in 1759.

[602] Viage, 1614, ff. 35-37.

[603] Lope de Vega, Comedias, Tom. IX., Barcelona, 1618, f. 133, El Animal de Ungria.

[604] Don Quixote, Parte I. c. xii.

[605] Doblado’s Letters, 1822, pp. 296, 301, 303-309; Madame Calderon’s Life in Mexico, London, 1843, Letters 38 and 39; and Thompson’s Recollections of Mexico, New York, 1846, 8vo, Chap. 11. How much the autos were valued to the last, even by respectable ecclesiastics, may be inferred from the grave admiration bestowed on them by Martin Panzano, chaplain to the Spanish embassy at Turin, in his Latin treatise, “De Hispanorum Literatura,” (Mantuæ, 1759, folio), intended as a defence of his country’s literary claims, in which, speaking of the autos of Calderon, only a few years before they were forbidden, he says they were dramas, “in quibus neque in inveniendo acumen, nec in disponendo ratio, neque in ornando aut venustas, aut nitor, aut majestas desiderantur.”—p. lxxv.

[606] These representations in private houses had long been common. Bisbe y Vidal (Tratado, 1618, c. 18) speaks of them as familiar in Barcelona, and treats them, in his otherwise severe attack on the theatre, with a gentleness that shows he recognized their influence.

[607] It is not easy to make out how much the theatre was really interfered with during these four or five years; but the dramatic writers seem to have felt themselves constrained in their course, more or less, for a part of that time, if not the whole of it. The accounts are to be found in Casiano Pellicer, Orígen, etc., de la Comedia, Tom. I. pp. 216-222, and Tom. II. p. 135;—a work important, but ill digested. Conde, the historian, once told me, that its materials were furnished chiefly by the author’s father, the learned editor of Don Quixote, and that the son did not know how to put them together. A few hints and facts on the subject of the secular drama of this period may also be found in Ulloa y Pereira’s defence of it, written apparently to meet the particular case, but not published till his works appeared in Madrid, 1674, 4to. He contends that there was never any serious purpose to break up the theatre, and that even Philip II. meant only to regulate, not to suppress it. (p. 343.) Don Luis Crespé de Borja, Bishop of Orihuela and ambassador of Philip IV. at Rome, who had previously favored the theatre, made, in Lent, 1646, an attack on it in a sermon, which, when published three years afterwards, excited a considerable sensation, and was answered by Andres de Avila y Heredia, el Señor de la Garena, and sustained by Padre Ignacio Camargo. But nothing of this sort much hindered or helped the progress of the drama in Spain.

[608] The clergy writing loose and immoral plays is only one exemplification of the unsound state of society so often set forth in Madame d’Aulnoy’s Travels in Spain, in 1679-80;—a curious and amusing book, which sometimes throws a strong light on the nature of the religious spirit that so frequently surprises us in Spanish literature. Thus, when she is giving an account of the constant use made of the rosary or chaplet of beads,—a well-known passion in Spain, connected, perhaps, with the Mohammedan origin of the rosary, of which the Christian rosary was made a rival,—she says, “They are going over their beads constantly when they are in the streets, and in conversation; when they are playing ombre, making love, telling lies, or talking scandal. In short, they are for ever muttering over their chaplets; and even in the most ceremonious society it goes on just the same; how devoutly you may guess. But custom is very potent in this country.” Ed. 1693, Tom. II. p. 124.

[609] The “Vida y Purgatorio del Glorioso San Patricio,” of which I have a copy, (Madrid, 1739, 18mo), was long a popular book of devotion, both in Spanish and in French. That Calderon used it is obvious throughout his play. Wright, however, in his pleasant work on St. Patrick’s Purgatory, (London, 1844, 12mo, pp. 156-159), supposes that the French book of devotion was made up chiefly from Calderon’s play; whereas they resemble each other only because both were taken from the Spanish prose work of Montalvan. See ante, p. 298.

[610] When Enio determines to adventure into the cave of Purgatory, he gravely urges his servant, who is the gracioso of the piece, to go with him; to which the servant replies,—

Comedias, 1760, Tom. II. p. 264.

There is, however, a good deal that is solemn in this wild drama. Enio, when he goes to the infernal world, talks, in the spirit of Dante himself, of

[611] See Chapters 4 and 6 of Montalvan’s “Patricio.”

[612] It is beautifully translated by A. W. Schlegel. A drama of Tirso de Molina, “El Condenado por Desconfiado,” goes still more profoundly into the peculiar religious faith of the age, and may well be compared with this play of Calderon, which it preceded. It represents a reverend hermit, Paulo, as losing the favor of God, simply from want of trust in it; while Enrico, a robber and assassin, obtains that favor by an exercise of faith and trust at the last moment of a life which had been filled with the most revolting crimes.

[613] An interesting, but somewhat too metaphysical, discussion of the character of this play, with prefatory remarks on the general merits of Calderon, by Karl Rosenkranz, appeared at Leipzig in 1829, (12mo), entitled, “Ueber Calderon’s Tragödie vom wunderthätigen Magus.”