UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SAN D EGO 'LIBRARY UN/VERITY OR .CALIFORNIA SAtt DIEGO / DAYFIELD BEQUEST. UN VERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. SAN DIEGO 3 1822025136649 Social Sciences & Humanities Library University of California, San Diego Please Note: This item is subject to recall. V Date Due JULI 5?nm Cl 39 (5/97) UCSD Lib. LIFE'S A DREAM: THE GREAT THEATRE OF THE WORLD. r LIFE'S A DREAM: QQ/( THE GREAT THEATRE OF THE WORLD. FROM THE SPANISH OF CALDERON. WITH AN ESSAY ON HIS LIFE AND GENIUS BY EICHAED CHENEVIX TEENCH. LONDON: JOHN W. PAEKEE & SON, WEST STEAND. 1856. LONDON : SAV1LL AND EDWABDS, PE1NTEES, CHANDOS-STBEZT. PEEFACE. rpHESE translations have lain by me for nearly twice the nine years during which Horace recommended that a poem should re- main in its author's power. They formed part of a larger scheme long ago conceived; but in the carrying out of which I presently dis- covered inner difficulties; not to say that it would have required, as I also soon was aware, a far greater amount of time and labour than I was either willing or had a right to bestow upon it. The scheme was consequently laid aside. At the same time I did not lay aside the hope of rescuing a few portions of my work from the ab- solute oblivion to which the remainder, written VI PREFACE. and unwritten, was consigned ; and of preparing these, if ever a convenient time should arrive, for the press. The time was long in arriving. It is, however, these portions which, with a few later revisions, and here and there a gap filled up, constitute the verse translations occupying the latter half of this little volume. A first sketch of the Essay prefixed to these translations dates back to the same period. I could not, however, let this go forth without seeking to bring up at least its literary notices to the present time; and in doing this, in sup- plying what, as I passed it again under my eye, seemed to me most lacking in it, and in modify- ing earlier judgments, till they expressed more exactly present convictions, I find that, without having at all expected or desired this result, I have re- written the greater portion of the Essay. ITCHENSTOKE, April gth, 1856. MR CONTENTS. ON THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF CALDERON. PAGE CHAP. I. THE LIFE OF CALDERON I II. THE GENIUS OF CALDERON (his Plays) . . 31 ,, in. THE GENIUS OF CALDEEON (his AutOS) . . 79 ,, IV. CALDEKON IN ENGLAND 1 05 TRANSLATIONS FEOM CALDERON. i. LIFE'S A DREAM 125 II. THE GREAT THEATRE OF THE WORLD . . . .175 APPENDIX 219 ON THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF CALDERON. CHAPTER I. THE LIFE OP CALDERON. rPHERE are few poets, who have been so dif- - ferently judged, who have been set so high, and so low, as Calderon ; few, who have been made the objects, on one side, of such enthu- siastic admiration and applause ; on the other, of such extreme depreciation and contempt. Consult the Schlegels, or any other of his chief German admirers, and you would suppose that in him Shakespeare had found his peer, that he had attained unto " the first three," to Homer and Dante and Shakespeare, and that he, a fourth, occupied a throne of equal dignity with theirs. For Sismondi, on the contrary, and for others not a few, he is little better than a dex- B 2 THE LIFE OP CALDERON. [CH. trous play-wright, an adroit master of stage- effect; a prodigal squanderer of poetical gifts, which, indeed, they do not deny to have been eminent, on a Spanish populace, whose tastes he flattered, and from whom he obtained that meed of present popularity which was justly his due, being now to seek for no other. And perhaps there has been still greater divergence and disagreement in the estimates which have been formed of the ethical worth of this poet. " In this great and divine master the enigma of life is not merely expressed, but solved ;" these are the words of Frederic Schlegel, setting him in this above Shakespeare, who for the most part is content, according to him, with putting the riddle of life, without attempting to resolve it. And again, " In every situation and circumstance Calderon is, of all dramatic poets, the most Christian." And Augustus Schlegel, who had not his brother's Romanist sympathies to affect his judgment, in a passage of rare elo- quence in his Lectures on Dramatic Literature,* characterizes the religious poetry of Calderon, as one never-ending hymn of thanksgiving, ascend- ing continually to the throne of God. Falling * Lect. 29. I.] THE LIFE OF CALDERON. 3 in, too, with the very point of his brother's praise, ' Blessed man !' he exclaims, ' he had escaped from the wild labyrinths of doubt into the stronghold of belief; from thence with un- disturbed tranquillity of soul, he beheld and portrayed the storms of the world ; to him human life was no longer a dark riddle.' These two set the example ; many followed in their train. Others, meanwhile, have not been wanting who have been able to see nothing but what is morally perverse and injurious in his poetry. Thus Sain goes so far as to say that he can never read Calderon without indignation, ac- cuses him of having no other aims but to make his genius subservient to the lowest prejudices and superstitions of his countrymen. And others in the same spirit describe him as the poet of the Inquisition, (the phrase is Sismondi's,) of Romanism in its deepest degradation, in its most extravagant divorce of religion from morality; what morality he has being utterly perverted, the Spanish punctilio in its bloodiest excess, with much more in the same strain. Many, too, of those who abstain from passing any such strong moral condemnation on the Spanish poet, or looking at his writings from B 2 4 THE LIFE OF CALDERON. [cH. any such earnest ethical point of view, while they give him credit for a certain amount of technical dramatic skill, have no genuine sympathy with him, no hearty admiration for his works. They find everywhere more to blame than to praise ; brilliant but cold conceits, oriental hyperboles, the language of the fancy usurping the place of the language of the heart; and when they praise him the most, it is not as one of the stars shining with a steady lustre in the poetical firmament, but as an eccentric meteor, filling the mind of the beholder with astonishment rather than with admiration .Such a " frigid" character of him (it is his own word) Hallam * has given, acknowledg- ing at the same time the slightness of his ac- quaintance both with Calderon himself, and with the language in which he has written ; and such the author [Southey 1 ? or Lockhart?] of an able article in the Quarterly Review, 1 ^ with whose judgment Hallam has consented in the main. That my own judgment does not agree with theirs who set him thus low in the scale of poeti- cal merit, still less with theirs who charge him with that profound moral perversity, J need hardly aflBrm. For small and slight as this vo- * Literature of Europe, vol. 3. pp. 32 541. t Vol. 25. pp. i 24, The Spanish Drama. I.] THE LIFE OF CALDERON. 5 lume is, I should have been little tempted to bestow the labour it has cost me on that which, as poetry, seemed to me of little value ; and still less disposed to set forward in any way the study of a writer who, being what his earnest cen- surers affirm, could only exert a mischievous in- fluence, if he exerted any, on his readers. How far my judgment approaches that of his enthu- siastic admirers, what drawbacks it seems need- ful to make on their praises as extravagant and excessive, what real and substantial worth will still, as I believe, remain, it will be my endeavour to express this in the pages which follow. But these considerations will be most fitly in- troduced by a brief sketch of Calderon's life, and of the circumstances of Spain before and during the period when he flourished, so far as they may be supposed to have affected him and his art. So shall we be able better to understand, (and it is not unworthy of study,) that great burst of dra- matic invention, undoubtedly after the Greek and English, the most glorious explosion of genius in this kind which the world has ever beheld, and which beginning some ten or fifteen years before Calderon's birth, may be said to have expired when he died. There are indeed only three great original dramatic literatures in the world, and 6 THE LIFE OF CALDERON. [CH. this, in which Calderon is the central figure, is one. Greece, England, and Spain are the only three countries, in the western world at least, which boast an independent drama, one going its own way, growing out of its own roots, not timidly asking what others have done before, but boldly doing that which its own native impulses urged it to do; the utterance of the national heart and will, accepting no laws from without, but only those which it has imposed on itself, as laws of its true liberty, and not of bondage. The Roman drama and the French are avowedly imitations ; nor can all the vigour and even originality in detail which the former displays, vindicate for it an independent position ; much less can the latter, which, at least in the nobler region of tragedy, is altogether an artificial production, claim this; indeed it does not seek to do so, finding its glory in the renunciation of any such claim. Germany has some fine plays ; but no national dramatic literature; the same must be said of Italy ; and the period has long since past for both when it would have been possible that this want should be supplied. For us, who behold Spain only in the depth of her present bankruptcy, literal and figurative, I.] THE LIFE OF CALDERON. 7 it is difficult to realize the lofty elevation of power and dignity and honour at which she stood in the sixteenth century, and, while as yet the secret of her decadence was not divined, during a portion of the seventeenth ; the extent to which the Spa- niard was honoured with the fear, the admiration, and the hatred of the rest of Europe. That six- teenth had been for him a century of achievements almost without parallel. At the close of the century preceding, the Christians of Spain had brought their long conflict with the infidel at home to a triumphant close. But these eight hundred years of strife had impressed their stamp deeply on the national character. 'As iron sharpeneth iron,' so had this long collision of races and religions evoked many noble qualities in the Spaniard, but others also most capable of dangerous abuse. War with the infidel in one shape or another had become almost a necessity of the national mind. The Spanish cavalier might not be moral, but religious, according to that distinction between morality and religion possible in Roman Catholic countries, he always must be, by the same necessity that, to be a gentleman, he must be well born and courteous and brave. The field for the exercise of this Christian chi- 8 THE LIFE OF CALDERON". [CH. valry at home was no sooner closed to him than other and wider fields were opened. Granada was taken in 1492 ; in the veiy same year Columbus discovered a New World, to the conquering of which the Spaniard advanced quite as much in the spirit of a crusader as of a gold-seeker; and we wrong him altogether, at least such men as Cortez, if we believe that only the one passion was real, while the other was assumed. All exploits of fabled heroes of romance were out- done by the actual deeds of these conquerors deeds at the recital of which the world, so long as it has admiration for heroic valour and en- durance, or indignation for pitiless cruelty, will shudder and wonder. But this valour was not all to be lavished, nor these cruelties to be practised, on a scene remote from European eyes. The years during which Cortez was slowly winning his way to the final conquest of the Mexican Empire, were exactly the earliest years of the Reformation in Europe (1518 1521). This Reformation, adopted by the North of Europe, repelled by the South, was by none so energetically repelled as by the Spaniards, who henceforward found a sphere wide as the whole civilized world in which to make proof that they were the most Christian of all Christian nations, L] THE LIFE OF CALDEROIf. 9 the most Catholic of all Catholic. Spain did not shrink from her part as champion of the perilled faith, but accepted eagerly the glories and the sacrifices which this championship entailed. Enriched by the boundless wealth of the Western world, having passed in Philip the Second's time from freedom into despotism, and bringing the energies, nursed in freedom, to be wielded with the unity which despotism pos- sesses, she rose during the sixteenth century ever higher and higher in power and consideration. It was towards the end of that century, that is, when Lope de Vega took possession of the rude drama of his country, and with the in- stincts of genius strengthened and enlarged, without disturbing, the old foundations of it, that the great epoch of her drama began. All that went before was but as the attempts of Kid and Peele, or at the utmost of Marlowe, in ours. The time was favourable for his appearance. Spain must, at this time, have been waiting for her poet. The restless activity which had pushed her forward in every quarter, the spirit of enter- prize which had discovered and won an empire in the New World, while it had attached to her some of the fairest provinces and kingdoms of the Old, was somewhat subsiding. She was 10 THE LIFE OF CALDERON. [oil. willing to repose upon her laurels. The wish had risen up to enjoy the fruits of her long and glorious toils ; to behold herself, and what was best and highest in her national existence, those ideals after which she had been striving, reflected back upon her in the mirrors which art would supply ; for she owed her drama to that proud epoch of national histoiy which was just con- cluding, as truly as Greece owed the great burst of hers, all which has made it to live for ever, to the Persian War, and to the elevation consequent on its successful and glorious conclu- sion. The dramatic poet found every thing ready to his hand. Here was a nation proud of itself, of its fidelity to the Catholic faith, of its championship, at all sacrifices, of that faith, possessing a splendid past history at home and abroad, a history fall of incident, of passion, of marvel, and of suffering ; much of that history so recent as to be familiar to all, and much which was not recent, yet familiar as well, through ballad and romance which everywhere lived on the lips of the people. Here was a nation which had set before itself, and in no idle pretence, the loftiest ideals of action ; full of the punctilios of valour, of honour, of loyalty ; a generation to whom life, their own life, or the I.] THK LIFE OF CALDERON. II life of those dearest, was as dust in the balance compared with the satisfying to the utmost tittle the demands of these; so that one might say, that what Sir Philip Sidney has so beau- tifully called " the hate-spot ermeline," the ermine that rather dies than sullies its white- ness with one spot or stain, was the model they had chosen. Here was a society which had fashioned to itself a code of ethics, which, with all of lofty and generous that was in it, was yet often exaggerated, perverted, fantastic, in- exorable, bloody ; but which claimed unquestion- ing submission from all, and about obeying which, 110 hesitation of a moment might occur. What materials for the dramatic poet were here ! Nor may we leave out of sight that there were circumstances, which modified and rendered less fatal than we might have expected they would prove, even those influences that were manifestly hostile to the free development of genius in Spain. Thus it is qiiite true that Spain may be said finally to have passed from a land of constitu- tional freedom into a despotism, with the crush- ing by Philip the Second of the liberties of Aragon. But for all this, the mighty impulses of the free period which went before, did not im- mediately fail. It is not for a generation or two 12 THE LIFE OF CALDERON. [CH. that despotism effectually accomplishes its work, and shows its power in cramping, dwarfing, and ultimately crushing the faculties of a people. The nation lives for a while on what has been gained in nobler epochs of its life ; and it is not till this is exhausted, till the generation which was reared in a better time has passed away, and also the generation which they have formed and moulded under the not yet extinct traditions of freedom, that all the extent of the spiritual, moral, and intellectual mischief becomes appa- rent. Moreover, it must not be lost sight of that the Spanish was not an antinational des- potism, such as the English would have been, if Charles the First had succeeded in his attempt to govern without Parliaments. On the contrary it was a despotism in which the nation gloried ; which itself helped forward. It was consequently one in which the nation did not feel that humi- liation and depression, which are the results of one running directly counter to the national feeling, and being the permanent badge of un- successful resistance to a detested yoke. Even the hateful Inquisition itself, by dis- couraging, and indeed absolutely repressing, all activity of genius in every other direction destined as it was absolutely to extinguish it in I.] THE LIFE OP CALDERON. 1 3 all yet for a season gave greater impulse to its movements in one direction. There was one province, that of poetry, and above all dramatic poetry, over which it never seems to have ex- tended that jealous and suspicious surveillance with which it watched every other region of human thought and activity. Such are some features of the Spain in which Lope de Vega, Calderon, and their peers grew up ; under these influences they were formed. At the time, indeed, when Calderon was born, and much more when he was rising into man- hood, the glory of his country was somewhat on its decline. Grey hairs were upon her. She, however, knew it not. Many glimpses of her past glory gilded her yet. Many pledges and evidences of her former greatness, not a few be- quests of that heroic past, remained with her still. The Netherlands were not yet hopelessly lost ; Portugal was still an appanage of the Spanish crown ; the youthful Conde" had not yet de- stroyed at Rocroi the prestige of that hitherto invincible infantry of Spain. She might still believe herself rich, because the treasures of the Indies flowed through her coffers; not knowing that these were barren -making streams for her, extinguishing in their passage her own industry 14 THE LIFE OF CALDERON. [CH. and manufactures, and then passing on to enrich foreign or hostile soils. The secret of her decay was concealed, in great part, not merely from herself, but from others, from all but the most understanding. It was to Spain that our first James just at this period turned, when he sought a wife for his only son, as counting that alliance more desirable than any other in Europe.* And when that marriage came to nothing, and the pros- pects of a contest with Spain rapidly succeeded those of ah alliance with her, how great she still was in the judgment of the statesmen of Europe may be seen from the very remarkable Consider- ations touching a War with Spain, 1624, by Lord Bacon. ' A war with Spain,' he there de- clares, ' is a mighty work :' and this, even while the keen-eyed statesman plainly saw that the colossus was not so great in reality as in appear- ance and reputation, and spied with a searching eye its weaknesses ; and, most important of all, * Calderon was resident in Madrid in the year of Prince Charles' romantic visit to that city (1623) a young poet' of rising fame, but as yet filling no such office as would cause him to take any share in the shews and triumphs with which that visit was celebrated. A few years later, aad we should not probably have wanted some gorgeous mytho- logical spectacle from his pen in which the alliance and future nuptials would have been shadowed forth. I.] THE LIFE OF CALDERON. 15 did not fail to note that every day the relative strength of the two states was changing in favour of England, which was ever rising in strength as Spain was falling. Still the decadence of Spain was not openly acknowledged as yet. Long after others had divined, and even proclaimed, her own duteous children would have refused to see it. They certainly did not perceive it as yet. The near future of their country's fall was hidden from them. They saw not her who a little while before was the chief and foremost among the nations, already failing in the race, to fall presently into the rear, nay to be thrown out altogether from the great onward march of European civilization. It was well, at least for her poets and her painters, that to hide this from their eyes was possible to them still. A very little later, when the symptoms of her rapid decay became more numerous and also more palpable, so that even they could not have missed them, it would have been impossible for a great poet to have arisen in Spain. For a great poet, without a great country, without a great people for him to be proud of, and which in return he feels shall be proud of him, without this action and reaction, never has been, and 1 6 THE LIFE OF CALDERON. [CH. can never be. Elegant and even spirited lyrics, graceful idyls, comedies of social life, with all the small underwood of poetry, can very well exist, as they often have existed, where there is little or no national life or feeling; but its grander and sublimer forms, epos and tragedy and the loftier lyrics, can grow out of, and nourish themselves from, no other soil than that of a vigorous national existence. The names of Calderon and of his great dramatic cotempo- raries, of the most illustrious among the Spanish painters, (the lives of Velazquez and Murillo run pretty nearly parallel to his,) are evidences that such a period was not yet overlived in Spain. At the same time it must be owned that he stood on its extremest verge. He who saw the sun of his country's glory, if not indeed at its zenith, yet still high in the heaven, saw it also in its swift decline and descent; and had his long life been extended only a little longer, he would have seen it set altogether. The most important source from which the materials for Calderon's life are derived is a short biography written by his friend, Vera Tassis. This was prefixed by him to an edition of Cal- deron's plays, the first volume of which was I.] THE LIFE OF CALDEKON. 17 published the year after his death.* Brief as this record is, it contains even less than the first aspect of its narrow limits would lead one to expect ; for it is composed in the worst style of affected eloquence ; however this may be partially redeemed by the tone of true affection which makes itself felt even through a medium so un- favourable as this. Considering too the bio- grapher's opportunities of knowledge, derived from a sister of the poet who survived him, and from other of his friends, as well as from personal intercourse, (for he speaks of Calderon's death as being to him the loss of a parent, a master, and a friend,) its notices are very few and unsatisfactory. The writer would indeed have deserved much better of the after- world, if, instead of pompous and turgid eulogiums, which would have fitted almost equally well any great poet who had ever lived, he had given a few characteristic details of Calderon's life and habits; these unfortunately are wanting altogether. And even the information which he does afford us is not altogether accurate; for he stumbles at the very threshold, making the year * This edition (Madrid, 1682 1691, 9 torn. 4to) is naturally the first which contains his collected plays. C 1 8 THE LIFE OF CALDERON. [CH. 1 60 1 to have been that of Calderon's birth, a mistake which has since propagated itself widely; while an extract from his baptismal register, pre- served in a very trustworthy work, called The Sons of Madrid* and entitled, as documentary evidence, to far greater weight, gives Feb. i4th, 1600, as the day of his baptism; not to say that in another rare work,t published by a friend in his honour, and written immediately after his death, it is distinctly stated on the authority of Calderon himself, that he was born Jan. i^th, 1600. Madrid had the honour of being his birth-place. His father, secretary to the Treasury Board under Philip the Second and Philip the Third, was of a good family of the Montana, a moun- tainous district so called in the neighbourhood of Burgos ; his mother of a noble Flemish family long settled in Castile. His parents were, accord- ing to The Sons of Madrid, " very Christian and discreet persons, who gave their children an edu- cation conformable to their illustrious lineage." These children were four an eldest son, D. Diego, who succeeded to the family estates and * Lot Sijos de Madrid, t. 4. p. 218. t Obdisco Funebre. I.] THE LIFE OP CALDERON. 1 9 honours; a daughter, who became a professed nun of the order of St. Clare, and survived the poet by a year ; D. Josef, who followed the career of arms, and fell in battle in the year 1645 ; and D. Pedro, the youngest, with whom we have to do.* He received his first rudiments of educa- tion in the Jesuit College at Madrid; and then for five years studied philosophy and the scholastic theology, (of which fact abundant traces appear in his writings,) at the University of Salamanca. Leaving it at nineteen, he spent the five or six years that followed at the capital, having already in his fourteenth year shown the bent of his genius towards the stage by a drama, The Chariot of Heaven, which has not come down to us. Like so many other of the most distinguished authors of Spain, he began his active career as a soldier; in his twenty-fifth year serving in the Milanese, and afterwards in the Low Countries, his biographer assuring us that his studies were not through these his more active engagements at all intermitted. Some have supposed that he was present at the siege and taking of Breda by * Los Hijos de Madrid, t. T. p. 305 ; t. i. p. 218 ; t. 3. p. 24. C 2 20 THE LIFE OF CALDERON. [CH. Spinola, the great Genoese captain in the service of Spain (1625); inferring this from his singular familiarity with all the details of this famous feat of arms, as displayed in his play called The Siege of Breda* How long his military career lasted we are not told. We find him at a date some- what later than this again at Madrid, whither he had been summoned by the reigning monarch, Philip the Fourth. In 1630 his fame was so well established that Lope de Vega recognizes him as his true and equal successor; while five years later the death of Lope (1635) left him the undisputed occupant of the highest place among the poets of Spain, a preeminence which he held without the challenge of a rival to the end of his life. It was observed just now that Calderon came to Madrid in obedience to the summons of Philip * The surrender of Breda was a subject which employed the pencil of Velazquez as well as the pen of Calderon. The picture bearing this name is a chief ornament of the Royal Gallery at Madrid, and one of the greatest works of a great master. (See Stirling, Velasquez and his Works, p. 148.) The play, though spirited, is too much a mere chronicle of the siege and capitulation. It was probably a mere piece for the occasion. It is pleasant to notice the justice which Calderon does to the gallantry of Morgan, an English cap- tain, who with a small body of his countrymen, as we know from other sources, assisted in the defence of the place. I.] THE LIFE OF CALDERON. 21 the Fourth. This monarch, himself an author, and writing his own language with precision and purity,* was passionately addicted to the drama. Indeed some plays, said not to be without merit, are ascribed, but on no sufficient evidence, to him. Unfortunately he expended on his artistic and literary pursuits a great portion of that time and those energies, which would have been far better bestowed on the fulfilment of the kingly duties which were so greatly neglected by him. There was much, however, in the character of the youthful monarch, (he was five years younger than the poet,) which was gracious, amiable, and attractive ;t and a little anecdote * Pellicer, a Spanish scholar of the last century, and Librarian of the Royal Library at Madrid, states that in that Library are preserved MS. translations by this king of Francis Guicciardini's History of the Wars of Italy, and also of his nephew's Description of the Low Countries ; to the latter of which a graceful and sensible prologue has been prefixed by the king. (Origen y Progresos de la Comedia en Espafia, Madrid, 1804, t. i. p. 162.) f- For a happy sketch of his character, see Stirling, Velasquez and his Works, London, 1855, pp. 46 48. Dunlop's Memoirs of Spain during the Reigns of Philip the Fourth and Charles the Second, i voll. Edinburgh, 1834, are not very profound, and their idiom is occasionally rather Scotch than English. They contain, however, enough of information agreeably conveyed, and which is not very easily found elsewhere, to occasion a regret that he never 22 THE LIFE OP CALDEROST. [CH. or two imply that the relations between the two were easy and familiar. Director of the Court theatre, which was the post that Calderon, whether nominally or no, yet really occupied now, does not appear a very promising, nor yet a very dignified one, for a great poet to assume ; yet one not very dissimilar Goethe was willing for many years to sustain at Weimar ; and no doubt, like so many other positions, it was very much what the holder was willing to make it. A member of the Military Order of Santiago, (for in 1637 he had received this honour,) Cal- deron had the opportunity of shewing in his middle age that his martial ardour was not quenched. On occasion of the revolt in Cata- lonia in 1640 the members of the three Mili- tary Orders were summoned to take the field. His biographer tells us that it was only by a device that Calderon was able to take that part in the perils of the campaign, to which in duty and carried out a purpose entertained by him (see vol. r. p. ix. ; vol. 2. p. 415) of dedicating a third volume to the history of dramatic art in Spain during the seventeenth century. As it is, the intention of devoting an especial treatise to this subject has caused him almost wholly to pass by a matter, which in the life of such a monarch as Philip the Fourth could else have hardly failed to occupy some prominence in his book. I.] THE LIFE OF CALDERON. 23 honour he felt himself bound. The king wished to detain the poet at his side. Garcilasso, the author of the most elegant lyrics after the Italian fashion which Spain had produced, had perished quite in his youth at the storming of a fortified mill, leaving only the first-fruits of his graceful genius behind him. Philip may not have been willing to expose a far greater light to a like premature extinction. At any rate he desired to hinder the poet from going; and this he supposed that he had effectually done, when he gave him a festal piece to prepare, which according to the king's anticipation would abundantly occupy him until after the expedition had set out. Calderon however defeated his purpose, bringing his appointed task with such rapidity to a close, that he was able to follow and join the army in time, as Vera Tassis tells us, to share with it all its dangers until peace was concluded. Such is the account of his biographer; and such conduct would be entirely in keeping with the chivalrous character of Calderon; yet it is not without its difficulties. In the first place the king could only have expected by such an artifice as this to detain him from the perils of the campaign on the assumption that the war would 24 THE LIFE OF CALDERON. [CH. be over almost as soon as begun. A fleet which had once set sail it might be impossible after- wards to join; but infinite opportunities must have offered of joining an army only two or three provinces off; and between such and the capital there must have been constant communication. Perhaps such expectation of immediate success may have prevailed at Madrid. As it proved, the contest in Catalonia lasted for twelve years, the revolt being only suppressed in 1652; which makes another difficulty. Vera Tassis states that Calderon remained with the army till peace was concluded ; which would be for these twelve years. It is quite certain that long before this he was again in attendance on the Court. In 1649 he took a prominent share in preparing the shows and festivities which welcomed the arrival of Philip's new queen, Anna Maria of Austria, to Madrid; while in 1651, a year before the rebellion was quelled, he had taken holy orders : for like so many other of his countrymen, illustrious in war, or statesmanship, or art, the career which he began as a soldier, he concluded as a priest. In a Church so richly endowed as the Spanish was then, and one in which the monarch had been so successful in keeping the richest endowments in his own gift, it was not likely that Calderon I.] THE LIFE OP CALDEKON. 25 would long remain without preferment. The favour of his royal patron speedily conferred more than one preferment upon him ; and he continued, from time to time, to receive new proofs of his master's liberality, and of his wish to attach him as closely as possible to his person. His high court favour ended with the life of Philip. The death of that monarch was doubtless to Calderon not merely the loss of a patron, but almost of a friend. This event took place in 1665, and with it the faint nimbus of glory, which had until then continued, more or less, to surround the Spanish monarchy, quite disap- peared. A feeble minor, not less feeble in intel- lect than in age, occupied the throne. The court was the seat of miserable and disgraceful in- trigues. From that empire, once so proud and strong, cities and provinces were rent away by the violence or fraud of Louis the Fourteenth, almost as often as he chose to stretch out his hand and take them. He was indeed only hin- dered from tearing that empire piecemeal by the hope that a descendant of his own should ere long inherit it altogether. Literature with everything else felt the deeply depressing influence of the time. Calde- ron, however, still sang on ; he belonged to a 26 THE LIFE OF CALDERON. [cH. better epoch, and brought the poetic energies of that epoch into the evil days upon which he was now fallen; though he too began about this time to shew, in some degree, the effects of age, and, it may be, of the sunken splendours of his native land. To this later period of his life belongs a very slight and transient glimpse which we ob- tain of the poet, one however which, in default of fuller information, must not be passed by. Nor indeed is this little notice without a certain point of its own; it is indeed impossible not to admire the Frenchman's self-satisfied conviction of his immeasurable superiority as a critic over the benighted Spaniard, who was ignorant of the unities. It is a French traveller, who in his Diary of a Journey in Spain* thus writes : "Yesterday came the Marquess of Eliche,t * Boisel, Journal de Voyage d'Espagne, Paris, 1669, p. 298. I have never been able to fall in with this book, and the passage as given above is a translation of a transla- tion ; and whether a perfectly accurate rendering of the original I cannot be sure. f This was he who a few years earlier (in 1662) set on foot a small Gunpowder plot of his own, and nearly contrived to blow up Philip the Fourth with the royal family at the theatre of the Buen Retiro. He was pardoned for his father's sake. His good conduct in the field seems to have caused his treason to be forgotten ; and he rose in the succeed- ing reign to the highest offices in the State. I.] THE LIFE OF CALDEKON. 27 eldest son of Don Luis de Haro, and Monsieur de Barrie're, and took me to the theatre. The play, which had been before brought forward, but was newly revived, was naught, although it had Don Pedro Calderon for author. At a later hour I made a visit to this Calderon, who is held the greatest poet and the most illustrious genius in Spain at the present day. He is Knight of the Order of Santiago, and Chaplain to the Chapel of the Kings at Toledo ; but I gathered from his conversation that his head-piece was furnished poorly enough. We disputed a good while on the rules of the drama, which in this land are not recognized, and about which the Spaniards make themselves merry." Though no longer a foremost favourite of the Court, Calderon's relations to it still continued, and his services were put in requisition when- ever the so-called fiestas, or dramatic spectacles for peculiar occasions, were needed. With the nation his popularity survived undiminished to the close of his life. This life, which was one of singular peace and outward prosperity, he brought to an end on Whit-Sunday, May 25, 1681, his years running exactly parallel to those of that century of which he was so illustrious an orna- ment. A little volume of funeral eulogies, pub- 28 THE LIFE OF CALDERON. [ CH - lished the same year by a gentleman belonging to the household of his patron and friend, the Duke of Yeraguas,* is almost utterly barren of any historical notices about him of the slightest value. The only two facts which can be gleaned from it are these, the first, that poor Charles the Second shed tears at the announcement of his death, an act which the writer considers " not merely pardonable but praiseworthy," and which, whether true ,or only reported, seems to imply that his genius was in a measure still recognized even at the Court ; the other, that three thou- sand persons with torches attended his funeral. This, though it fell infinitely below the extraor- dinary solemnity and magnificence with which the obsequies of Lope de Yega were celebrated half a century before, yet tells of no slight honour in which the nation held its greatest, as he was the last of its great, poets. He was buried in the parish church of San Salvador, at Madrid, and a magnificent monument, (so Yera Tassis calls it,) surmounted with his portrait, was raised over his remains.t * Funebres Elogiog, Valencia, 1681. f With some alterations which had taken place in this Church about the middle of last century, a time probably when Calderon's fame was at its nadir, all traces of the exact place where his remains were deposited and of his tomb itself had disappeared. However in 1840 in pulling I.] THE LIFE OF CALDERON. 2p All notices which we have of Calderon from cotemporaries are pleasant, and give us the im- pression of one who was loved, and who was worthy to be loved. In his old age he used to collect his friends round him on his birthdays, and tell them amusing stories of his earlier life.* Vera Tassis recounts the noblest names of Spain as in the list of his personal friends ; nor does he fail to notice the signal absence of all gall from his pen, the entire freedom of his spirit from all sentiments of jealousy and envy. Calderon's writings bear out this praise. All his allusions to those who might be accounted his rivals and competitors are honourable alike to him and to them. There were but two great authors, be- tween whom and himself any rivalry could exist ; down the decayed cloister of St. Salvador a tomb was dis- covered under the walls of the vestry, whose inscription proved it to be his. His remains were transferred with con- siderable pomp and solemnity to the Church of our Lady of Atocha, which may be regarded as a kind of national Pan- theon. (Foreign Quarterly Review, April, 1841, p. 227.) It was I suppose upon this occasion that Zorrilla's Apotedsis de Don Pedro Calderon de la Sarca, Madrid, 1840, was published. I do not know anything of the other poems of Zorrilla, esteemed the best poet of modern Spain ; but this, though evidencing some -insight into the true character of Calderon's genius, is on the whole poor and feeble. * Prologue to the Obelisco Funebre. I have never seen this rare volume, but take this and a former reference to it from Ticknor's History of Spanish Literature. 30 THE LIFE OF CALDEKON. [CH. I. the one certainly of more genial humour, of deeper and more universal gifts, Cervantes, who, dying in 1617, had passed from life's scene as Calderon was entering actively upon it ; the other, Lope de Vega, probably on the whole his inferior, but occupying then, by right of prior possession, in the estimation of most, the highest seat in the Spanish Parnassus. There exist some pleasing lines of Calderon addressed to the latter, and he never misses an opportunity of paying a compliment to Cervantes. Indeed he dramatized a portion of Don Quixote, although this work has not come down to us. If he indulges sometimes in a little playful raillery on the writings of his brother dramatists, it is only of the same kind which from time to time he be- stows on his own. That his hand and heart were largely open to the poorer and less successful brethren of the poetical guild, his biographer very distinctly assures us. But of a multitude of other things which we should care to know he has not informed us. If we would complete our image of the poet, it must be from the internal evidence of his writings. Of his outer life we know almost nothing more than has here been told. CHAPTER II. THE GENIUS OF CALDERON. (HIS PLATS.) rpHEY convey altogether a wrong impression - of Calderon, who, willing to exalt and glo- rify him the more, isolate him wholly from his age, who pass over all its other worthies to magnify him only, presenting him to us not as one, the brightest indeed in a galaxy of lights, but as the sole particular star in the firmament of Spanish dramatic art. Those who derive their impression from the Schlegels, especially from Augustus, would conclude him to stand thus alone; to stand, if one might venture to em- ploy the allusion, a poetical Melchisedec, without spiritual father, without spiritual mother, with nothing round him to explain or account for the circumstances of his greatness. But there are no such appearances in literature ; great artists, poets, or painters, or others, always cluster; the conditions which produce one, produce many. They are not strewn at nearly equable distances through the life of a nation, but there are brief 32 THE GENIUS OF CALDERON. [CH. periods of great productiveness, with long inter- vals of comparative barrenness between ; or it may be, as indeed was the case with Spain, the aloe tree of a nation's literature blossoms but once. And if this is true in other regions of art, above all will it be true in respect of the drama.* In this, when it deserves the name, a nation is uttering itself, what is nearest to its heart, what it has conceived there of life and life's mystery, and of a possible reconciliation between the world which now is and that ideal world after which it yearns ; and the conditions of a people, which make a great outburst of the drama possible, make it also inevitable that this will utter itself not by a single voice but by many. Even Shakespeare himself, towering as he does immeasurably above all his compeers, is not a single isolated peak, rising abruptly from * Little more than a century covers the whole period intervening between the birth of Jischylus, B.C. 525 and the death of Euripides, B.C. 406. A period of almost exactly the same duration includes the birth of Lope, 1562, and the death of Calderon, 1681 ; while in our own drama the birth of Marlowe, 1565, and the death of Shirley, 1666, enclose a period considerably shorter, and one capable of a still further abridgment of nearly thirty years ; for although the last of the Elizabethan school of dramatists lived on to 1666, the Elizabethan drama itself may be said to have expired with the commencement of the Civil War, 1640. II.] THE GENIUS OF CALDERON. 33 the level plain; but one of a chain and cluster of mountain-summits; and his altitude, so far from being dwarfed and diminished, can only be rightly estimated, when it is regarded in relation with theirs. And if this is true even of him, it is much more so of Calderon ; who by no means towers so pre-eminently, and out of the reach of all rivalry and competition, above his fellows. The greatest of all the Spanish dramatists, he is yet equalled and excelled in this point and in that by one and another; as by Lope in inven- tion, by Tirso de Molina in exuberant and fes- tive wit. Let us regard him then not as that monster which some would present him to us; but, with all his manifold gifts, still as the orderly birth of his age and nation ; and regarding him as such, proceed to consider what those gifts were, and what he accomplished with them. When we seek to form an estimate of Cal- deron, it is, I think, in the first place impossible not to admire the immense range of history and fable which supplies him with the subject matter for his art, and the entire ease and self-possession with which he moves through every province of his poetical domain ; and this, even where he is not able to make perfectly good his claim to every portion of it. Thus he has several dramas D 34 THE GENIUS OF CALDERON. [cH. of which the argument is drawn from the Old Testament, The Locks of Absalom being perhaps the noblest of these. Still more have to do with the heroic martyrdoms and other legends of Christian antiquity, the victories of the Cross of Christ over all the fleshly and spiritual wicked- nesses of the ancient heathen world. To this theme, which is one almost undrawn upon in our Elizabethan drama, Massinger's Virgin Martyr is the only example I remember, he returns continually, and he has elaborated these plays with peculiar care. Of these The Wonder- working Magician* is most celebrated; but others, as Tlie Joseph of Women, The Two Lovers of Heaven, quite deserve to be placed on a level, if not indeed higher than it. A tender pathetic grace is shed over this last, which gives it a peculiar charm. Then too he has occupied what one might venture to call the region of sacred mythology, as in The Sibyl of the East, in which the profound legends identifying the Cross of Calvary and the Tree of Life ar~ wrought up into a poem of surpassing beauty. In other of these not the Christian, but the Romish, poet is predominant, as in The Pur- * See Immermann's Memorabilien, b. i. pp. 719 22Q. II.] THE GENIUS OF CALDERON. 35, gatory of St. Patrick, The Devotion of the Cross, Daybreak in Copacabana* this last being the story of the first dawn of the faith in Peru. Whatever there may be in these of superstitious, or, as in one of them there is, of ethically revolting, none but a great poet could have composed them. Then further, his historic drama reaches down from the gray dawn of earliest story to the cele- bration of events which happened in his own day ; it extends from The Daughter of the Air,^ being the legend of Semiramis, and in Goethe's judgment his most glorious piece,J (Goethe however seems only to have been familiar with those which had been translated into German,) down to The Siege of Breda, alluded to already. Between these are dramas from Greek history; and from Roman. Of these The Great Zenobia is the best; The Arms of Beauty, on the story of Coriolanus, and as poor as its name would indi- cate, the worst. Others are from Jewish; and a multitude from the history of modern Europe ; thus two at least from English annals ; one, rather * Translated by Schack, author of the admirable Ge- schichte der dramatischen Literatur und Kunst in Spanien, 3 Bande, Berlin, 1845, ^46, to which I am often indebted. + See Immermann's Afemorabilien, b. 2. pp. 247 271. Das herrlichste von Calderon's Stiicken. D 2 36 THE GENIUS OF CALDERON. [CH. a poor one, on the Institution of the Order of the Garter; another, The Schism of England ; which is his Henry the Eighth, and, as may be supposed, written at a very different point of view from Shakespeare's.* It is chiefly curious as shewing what was the popular estimate in Spain of the actors in our great religious reformation; and displays throughout an evident desire to spare the king, and to throw the guilt of his breach with the Church on Anna Boleyn and Cardinal Wolsey. But the great majority of Calderon's historical dramas are drawn, as was to be ex- pected in a poet so intensely national, and appealing to so intensely national a feeling, from the annals of his own country. These have the immense advantage of being the embodi- ment, for the most part, of events already familiar to the popular mind. The heroes of Spanish romance and of Spanish history are here brought forward; and not the re- moter names alone, but those of the century * It need only be observed that his main authority here is the book of Nicholas Sanders ("or Slanders rather," as Fuller has it) De Origine ac Progressu Sckismatis Angli- cani. A little essay on this drama (Ueber Die Kirclien- trennung von England, Schauspiel des Don Pedro Colder on, Berlin, 1819) has been written by F. \V. V. Schmidt, and is worth reading. II.] THE GENIUS OF CALDERON. 3? preceding, Isabella of Castile, Charles the Fifth, the Conquistadores, Philip the Second, Don John of Austria, Alva, Figueroa, and even some of those who were still living when he wrote. It is not easy to measure the effect which in their representation must have attended some of these. The Steadfast Prince, of which how- ever the hero is not Spanish but Portuguese, is the most celebrated among them. Leaving the region of history, and in a world more purely and entirely ideal, Calderon has some exquisite mythological pieces, in which he does not, in Cowley's words, merely serve up " the cold meats of the ancients, new heated and new set forth ;" but the old classical story comes forth new-born in the romantic poetry of the modern world. So is it, for instance, in the exquisitely graceful and fanciful poem, Echo and Narcissus; but, above all, this is true, where a Christian idea looks through the mytho- logical symbolism, and informs it with its own life; as in The Statue of Prometheus, and in another founded on the well known legend of Cupid and Psyche. In general, however, it must be owned that these mythological are the weak- est among his productions ; being many of them evidently intended merely as vehicles for show 38 THE GENIUS OP CALDERON. [CH and scenic splendour. They are the works of the poet of the Buen Retire, the director of the Court entertainments. We pass from these to romantic dramas, in which the poet occupies a fable-land altogether of his own creation, as in Llfes a Dream, an analysis of which, with large translations, will be found in this volume, or draws on the later Greek romances, as in Theagenes and. C/iariclea, or on Boiardo and Ariosto, or, it may be, on the prose tales of chivalry, as in The Bridge of Mantible, on which play Schlegel has bestowed the pains of translation. These form a not inconsiderable group. Then further, among his Comedias, which is the general title whereby all in Spain that is not either on the one side farce, on the other religious mystery, is called, he has many trage- dies, which by their effectual working on the springs of passion assert their right to this serious name. Some of these might almost as fitly have been enumerated among his historic com- positions. The Spanish drama moves too freely, too nearly resembles the free spontaneous growths of nature, to admit of any very easy or very rigorous classification. Like nature, it continu- ally defies and breaks through all artificial ar- rangements of its productions, and one must be II.] THE GENIUS OP CALDERON. 39 content to class those under one head, which might as well, or nearly as well, be classed under another. Still as in some of these compositions the tragic, in others the historic element is pre- dominant, they may be arranged, even while they partake of both, according to this predo- minance. Among the noblest in this kind is Jealousy the Greatest Monster; it is the story of Herod and Mariamne, and a genuine fate-drama, of colossal grandeur both in the conception and execution. The tragedies of a Spaniard writing for Spaniards, which should turn on jealousy might beforehand be expected to claim especial notice; and indeed Calderon has three or four others in this kind, of shuddering horror ; in which the Spanish pundonor is pxished to its bloodiest excess ; but the fearful power and immense effect of which it is impossible not to acknowledge. The Physician of his own Honowr is one of these ; but less horrible, and perhaps therefore more terrible, is another, noticeable likewise as a very masterpiece of construction, For a Secret Wrong a Secret Revenge, which is one of the very highest efforts of his genius. Hallam, not denying, but admitting freely, its singular efficiency and power, has yet called it "an atrocious play;" but he seems to me to have missed the point which certainly mitigates its atrocity, namely that 40 THE GENIUS OF CALDERON. [c'H. the murdered wife is so far guilty, that she is only waiting the opportunity to be so.* Another tragedy, but not of jealousy, Love after Death, is connected with the hopeless rising of the Moriscoes in the Alpuj arras (1568 1570), one of whom is its hero. It is for many reasons worthy of note; among other as shew- ing how far Calderon could rise above national prejudices, and expend all the treasures of his genius in glorifying the heroic devotedness of a noble foe. La Nina de Gomez Arias is founded on one of the most popular of Spanish ballads. The scene in this where Gomez Arias sells to the Moors the mistress of whom he has grown weary, and who now stands in his way, despite her entreaties and reproaches, I should accept as alone sufficient to decide the question whether the deepest springs of passion were his to open. It is nothing strange to hear that on one occa- sion a poor Spanish alguazil, who was serving as guard of honour on the stage, drew his sword, and rushed among the actors, determined that the outrage should not go on before his eyes. And seeing that Calderon's world seems some- times to consist too exclusively of the higher * It is translated into French by Damas Hinard, Chefs- d'osuvre du Thtdtre Espagnol, t. 2. pp. 157 213. II.] THE GENIUS OF CALDERON. 4! classes, and just such of the lower as minister immediately to their pleasures or necessities, the hearty homeliness of England's greatest poets, as of Chaucer and Shakespeare, being only too rare in him, one must not pass over his painful but noble tragedy of humble life, The Mayor of Zalamea.* He has frequently * We owe an admirable translation of this play to Mr. Fitzgerald. I shall have occasion to speak more of his translations hereafter. The speech of Isabella, the humble Lucretia of this tragedy, as she mourns over her mighty wrong, he characterizes as ' ' almost the most elevated and purely beautiful piece of Calderon's poetry he knows ; a speech (the beginning of it) worthy the Greek Antigone." As I believe that my readers, even those who do not read Spanish with facility, will yet be obliged for occasional quotations from the original, I will cite so much of this lament as probably Mr. F. alludes to : Nunca amenezca a mis ojos La luz hermosa del dia, Porque a su nombre no tenga Vergiienza yo de mi misma. j tu, de tantas estrellas Prirnavera fugitiva, No des lugar a la aurora, Que tu azul campafia pisa, Para que con risa y llanto Borre tu apacible vista ! Y ya que ha de ser, que sea Con llanto, mas no con risa. j Detente, o mayor planeta, Mas tiempo en la espuma fria 42 THE GENIUS OP CALDERON. [CH. been denied the faculty of drawing characters. J^ow that his characters are sometimes deficient in strong individual delineation is certainly true ; but that it is not always so this tragedy sufficiently attests. It is not here the peasant judge alone who is distinctly marked; but almost every other of the dramatis persons as well. To all these must be added his comedies in our sense of the word, themselves a world of infinite variety, but one in which I must not linger. Ulrici indeed says that in comedy was Del mar ! j Deja, que uua vez Dilate la noche esquiva Su tre"mulo imperio ; deja, Que de tu deidad se diga, Atenta a mis ruegos, que es Voluntaria, y no precisa ! j Para que quieres salir A ver en la historia mia La mas enorme maldad, La mas fiera tirania, Que en venganza de los hombres Quiere el cielo que se escriba ? Mas, ay de mi ! que parece Que es crueldad tu tirania ; Pues desde que te he rogado, Que te detuvieses, miran Mis ojos tu faz hermosa Descollarse por encima De los muntes. II.] THE GENIUS OP CALDERON. 43 Calderon's/brte; " therein first his truly poetical genius unfolds its full strength."* I cannot agree with him. These seem to me but the lighter play, as contrasted with the earnest toil, of his spirit. Moreover, while he was a master in the comedy of situation, the vein of his comic dialogue is often forced, and often flows scantily enough. He does not deal always with humble life in perfect good faith ; it is too often a sort of parody of his high life, itself a high life below stairs. Their charm consists in the ideal grace and beauty in which they are steeped, the warm atmosphere of poetry and romance which he generally succeeds in diffusing over them. I can only indicate a few of the most celebrated, as The Fairy Lady, which, variously trans- formed, has found a home in almost all lands ; The Gaoler of Himself , a finished piece of comedy, just playing on the verge of tragedy; The Loud Secret, and The Scarf and the Flower. Finally, we must add to these the Autos, or religious mysteries, of which there will be occasion to speak by and bye, for they claim a separate consideration. Putting all together, we must confess that the reach and compass of that * Shakspeare und sein Verhaltniss zu Calderon und Goethe, Halle, 1839, p. 533. 44 THE GENIUS OF CALDERON. [cH. poetical world which Calderon sought to occupy, was not small. To speak now of some of the technical merits of Calderon in dealing with his subject, after which it may be time to consider other matters which lie less on the surface. We observe then in him the completest mastery of his material ; all is laid out to the best advantage, all is calcu- lated and weighed beforehand. There are no after thoughts, no changes of plan as the compo- sition was growing under his hand, out of which the conclusion suits ill with the beginning; but as one perceives on a second reading glimpses of the last and preparations for it appear very often from the very first. Vast as is the cycle of his compositions, his dramas are more than one hundred and twenty, his autos more than seventy, being nearly two hundred in all, a number which would appear vaster still, if there were not Lope at hand with his fifteen hundred to make Calderon's fertility appear almost like barrenness, there are no where in them any tokens of haste ; all parts are fully and in the measure of their importance equably wrought out. Inequalities of course there will be, for every poet will at one time soar higher than at another; but there are no where to be found II.] THE GENIUS OF CALDERON. 45 the evidences of carelessness or haste. Several of his dramas, like more than one of Shake- speare's, have been laboriously recast and re- written, so that we possess them in two shapes, in their earlier and immaturer, in their later and riper forms. Nor, fruitful as his pen was, is it any thing impossible that he should have bestowed on all his works that careful elaboration for which I have here given him credit. Almost all poets of a first-rate excellence, dramatic poets above all, have been nearly as remarkable for the quantity as the quality of their compositions; nor has the first injuriously affected the second. Witness the seventy dramas of ^Eschylus, the more than ninety of Euripides, the hundred and thirteen of Sophocles. And if we consider the few years during which Shakespeare wrote, his fruitfulness is not less extraordinary. The vein has been a large and a copious one, and has flowed freely forth, keeping itself free and clear by the very act of its constant ebullition. And the fact is very explicable; it is not so much they that have spoken, as their nation that has spoken by them. And in the instance before us, we should not leave out of sight to how great an age the poet attained. His life, like that of Sophocles 4 6 THE GENIUS OP CALDERON. [CH. and of Goethe, was prolonged beyond his eightieth year. Nor only was his life a long one, but it was a life singularly free from all outward disturbances ; in this most unlike those of his great fellow-countrymen, Lope and Cer- vantes. He did not write for his bread, as with all his popularity did the former; he was no shuttlecock of fortune, no wrestler with poverty as with an armed man, and that for barest life, as the immortal author of Don Quixote. It might have been better for him, if he had known some of these conflicts; or perhaps, with his temperament, it might not. At all events such were not assigned to him. The generosity of the monarch whom he served, the large in- comings of the preferments which he held, these, even supposing that high literature was no better rewarded in his case than in that of many others, must have exempted him from all anxieties about money; indeed he appears to have had a considerable property to bequeath at his death; and his whole life, with the exception of his campaigns in the Milanese and in Flanders, which cannot have been lost time to him even in this respect, and his brief service in Catalonia, may very well have been dedicated entirely to the cultivation of his art. II.] THE GENIUS OF CALDERON. 47 Neither did he make for himself, as do so many to whom the perilous gifts of genius have been allotted, those cares and disquietudes, from which he had been graciously exempted from without. No one can doubt that to him was given a cheerful spirit, working joyously, and with no doubts nor misgivings, in that sphere which it found marked out for it. Doubtless that which the Schlegels affirm was true in respect of him ; the world's riddle was solved for him, and solved in the light of faith. The answer which he had found, and which he offers to others, may be quite unsatisfying to them; it fully satisfied him. No one can contemplate the noble por- trait occasionally prefixed to his works, the countenance so calm, so clear, so resolved, sur- mounted with the dome-like expanse of that meditative brow,* and not feel that to him, if to any, were given " the serene temples of the wise." And this lasted to the end; he was uot of those too many poets, who only "do begin their lives in gladness;" it was gladness with him to the end. * In a poem published immediately after his death, his eulogist celebrates, de su rostro grave lo capaz de la frente. It is a countenance not without its resemblances to Shake- speare's, but wanting, and how great a want, every indica- tion of his humour. 48 THE GENIUS OF CALDERON. [cil. It was with him as with those mountain sum- mits, which ever as they rise the higher, thrust themselves up into clearer and purer air; for we may distinctly mark, as his years advance, an increasing desire in him to withdraw himself from secular themes, to dedicate his genius wholly to the service of religion.* Then further, in every estimate of Calderon's merits his infinite dramatic tact and skill may well claim to be prominently urged. To some indeed he is only a play-wright; now play- wright no doubt he was, the most finished and accomplished probably that the world ever saw ; understanding the mechanism of dramatic con- struction better than it has ever been understood by any other. It is no doubt in this sense, and having this merit in view, that Schiller has said of him, " This poet would have saved Goethe and myself from many mistakes, if we had learned to know him earlier." At the same time we should entirely wrong Calderon, if we merely gave him * In his epitaph these words occur, Quse summo plausu vivens scripsit, moriens prasscribendo despexit. None of his biographers that I am aware of, have taken any notice of the words, or sought to measure how much they imply. Did he denounce, or wish the suppression of, his secular plays ? II. J THE GENIUS OP CALDEKON. 49 credit for a power of stage effect, and not for this as subservient to the highest interest of art. Let me illustrate by a single instance what I mean. I have already mentioned his Locks of Absalom as one of his finest plays founded on a scriptural subject. There is nothing in its kind grander than the scene in this, where Amnon is slain at the command of his brother Absalom. The marvellous skill with which this dreadful deed is prepared and brought about deserves the very highest admiration. With the in- terval of long years which had elapsed be- tween this murder and the crime which it avenged, the utter absence of all suspicion with which Amnon had accepted his brother's invitation, an inferior artist might, indeed cer- tainly would, have so brought about the cata- strophe, as merely to have revolted the spectators with what would have seemed a cold-blooded fratricide. But Calderon with rare skill, and in one of the noblest scenes which his theatre pos- sesses, brings the spectator to the point at which he still feels that it is indeed evil punishing evil, the wicked being used as scourges of the wicked; but he is not so far removed from all sympathy with the deed as would altogether mar the effect. The idyllic aspect of the whole scene of the E 50 THE GENIUS OP CALDERON. [CH. sheep-shearing (2 Sam. xiii. 23), the pastoral quietness, the groups of simple shepherds and shepherdesses, form a contrast the most striking with the act of a terrible revenge which is pre- sently to stain that green turf with blood. Tamar ever since her wrong has lived in deepest seclusion in this country place of her brother's, " desolate in her brother Absalom's house," and moves like a dark shadow among the simple and joyous shepherdesses of the land; for the sin of Amnon shows itself also in this that it has turned her whole soul, who was once gentle and loving, to bitterness and hate and the lust of re- venge. The royal youths are assembled; they have brought with them the manners of the court, its freedom and its license, and do not fail to show that they have done so. Teuca, an aged prophetess or hag, one hardly knows which, but in the secret of the blow which is about to fall, distributes different flowers to each to Solomon, to Adonijah, to Absalom, to Amnon to each with ambiguous words ; and in each case the flower, with the words which accompany it, and the answer which it calls out, have something prophetic of the future fortunes of the receiver. There is for each in all this an unconscious prophecy of his own doom. The whole forms II.] THE GENIUS OF CALDERON. 51 the most wonderful preparation for that which is about to be. The words which seem spoken at random, and which yet shall prove most lite- rally true, the irony of fate which unconsciously draws out of men's own lips the sentence of their doom, the first mutterings of those divine judg- ments which shall presently break in thunder over their heads, are all here. Presently the banquet is announced, and the other guests go in. Amnon alone tarries behind. The same that he was of old, wanton and injurious, he has been taken with the shape and grace of one of these veiled shepherdesses, and will make nearer acquaintance with her. Her replies to his advances are abrupt, yet full of mysterious allusions to that which has been, to that which shall so shortly be, to the past outrage, to the coming revenge. Does she refuse to unveil at his request? he will force her thereto. He is very fond of force, she answers. At last he does forcibly remove her veil, and perceiving that it is Tamar, rushes out as from a Medusa's face with horror and dismay. " 111 beginning," he exclaims, " this banquet has had." " But it shall have a worse ending," she replies. How marvellous the art in this way to reproduce the feeling of the original outrage in E 2 5 2 THE GENIUS OF CALDERON. [CH. the spectators, to revive in its strength the in- dignation against it which the long spaces of intervening time might else have weakened in great part. Amnon has scarcely gone out, when one cry, and then another, is heard within, for mercy from Amnon, of trium- phant vengeance mingled with Tamar's name from Absalom. It is but the work of a mo- ment, for no one knows better than Calderon when and where to precipitate the action, and the scene opens; the injurious Amnon lies dead across the tables with a bloody napkin thrown over him ; Absalom stands triumphing above him; his sister takes her place by his side ; while of the other guests some are flying, and others grouped in wildest con- fusion around. She had said in the moment of her agony, " I will cry to heaven." " Heaven answers late," he had scornfully replied. This was true, but though late it had answered still. There are scenes in Calderon equal to this; I know of none in which his genius shines more gloriously forth. When Calderon wrote, that noble Castilian language, the stateliest of the daughters of the Latin, not clipped and cut short like the hungry French, which devours so many of its II.] THE GENIUS OP CALDEKON. 53 syllables, not emasculated, like tlie Italian, nor eviscerated, like the Portuguese, was in its prime, perhaps just beginning to decline from it. Of this glorious tongue there is no greater maste^ than he. There seems no bidding of his which it does not wait to fulfil ; and he sometimes loves to display his mastery in it by tours de force, which are executed by him seemingly with the most perfect ease, and which give no sign of the difficulty which must have attended their accomplishment. He did not indeed wield the language at all periods of his life with equal felicity. Rich, ornate, and decorated as his diction always is, if only there is anything to justify its being so, he did not in his youth altogether escape the dulda vitia of the estilo culto, which was the fashion then ; while in the works of his old age there is a certain re -appear- ance of early faults, and this without the fiery vigour of youth to excuse or conceal them ; but take him at his best, and none can justly deny him this praise. Let us seek in other matters to measure out to him the praise or the blame which are fairly his, to avoid the extravagances in either of which not a few have been guilty. The wealth and prodigality of Calderon's imagery has been 54 THE GENIUS OF CALDERON. [CH. often extolled and admired; and with justice ; while yet, wealthy and prodigal as he appears to be, and no doubt is, at the same time he is not quite so wealthy, nor yet of quite so un- bounded a prodigality, as might at first sight appear. His almond-trees, his phoenixes, his "flowers which are the the stars of earth," and " stars which are the flowers of heaven," recur somewhat too often. He squanders in the con- fidence that what he scatters abroad will presently come back again to his hands ; seeing that what he has once used, he will not therefore feel the slightest scruple in using a second time or a hundredth. Nor does his repetition of himself confine it- self to these matters merely external. His inner spiritual world, though a wide one, is not, like Shakespeare's, an universal one. It does not stretch itself in every direction, till it loses itself in the infinite. On the contrary, it has limits, and those very fixed and rigid ones, beyond which it never extends. Certain factors, love, honour, religion, never fail to produce the same results, and this with so fixed a recurrence, that one sometimes begins to be afraid lest the whole matter should sink into a mechanical contrivance ; being almost tempted in moments of displeasure II.] THE GENIUS OF CALDEKON. 55 to liken his poetry to the shifting combinations of the kaleidoscope, which, ever as you turn it, yields only what you had seen already, however it may yield this, brought into new and sur- prising combinations. Thus when Goethe likens Calderon's plays to bullets or leaden soldiers cast all in the same mould,* he expresses this parti- cular fault, and by a comparison which at first appears to be utterly contemptuous. It must not however be so taken ; for Goethe had a sin- cere admiration for Calderon, although always with certain restrictions, and setting himself against the extravagance of his German wor- shippers ; of whom he complains that, instead of drinking in the spirit of Calderon, and nourishing themselves and their own art from his, they merely appropriated and reproduced his forms ; * Riemer (Mittheilungen uber Goethe, b. i . p. 648) : Unendliche Productivitat des Calderon, und Leichtigkeit des Gusses, wie werm Mann Bleisoldaten oder Kugeln giesse. Compare a letter of Tieck's in Solger's Nachge- lassene Schriften, b. i. p. 683 : Dieser Geist 1st eine der sonderbarsten Erscheinungen : kaum eine Spur von der grossen Vernunft, die den Shakspeare so himmlisch und acht human macht ; nichts rnehr von jener grossen Naivetat, die ich immer am Lope bewundern muss ; aber dafiir der durchgearbeiteste Manierist (im guten Sinn), den ich kenne. Compare p. 696 : Calderon ist ein vollendeter Manierist, und in seiner Manier gross und unverbesserlich. 56 THE GENIUS OF CALDERON. [CH. or, as in another place he expresses it : " Unhap- pily we Germans set his tender side in relation with our weak. Of his true strength there is little apprehension among us."* With this agree other utterances of his, wherein he shows, but always with full honour to the poet, his jealousy of the Calderomania which was the fashion in his time, and of the questionable influence which it was exercising on the dramatic art of his country, t Thus on one occasion he does not hesitate to express him- self in such language as the following : " How much of false Shakespeare and still more Calderon have brought upon us, the way in which these two great lights in the poetic heaven have be- come will o' the wisps for us, it will be for the historian of literature in the future time to record.";}: But some, perhaps, who would allow to a poet the right to borrow freely from himself, and to * Riemer (Mittheilungen uber Goethe, b. i. p. 649) : Leider werden wir Deutsche eben seine zarte Seite mit unseren schwachen in Rapport setzen. Von seiner wahren Starke ist noch wenig Begriff unter uns. *t* On this matter see Gervinus, Gesch. der National Literatur, b. 5. p. 604. J Goethe, Sdmmtliche Werke, Paris, 1836, b. 5. p. 62. In the same place he ascribes to the last, das bis zum Unwahren gesteigerte Talent. II.] THE GENIUS OP CALDEKON/ 57 repeat himself, would deny him the same liberty in respect of his neighbours. It must be con- fessed that Calderon often lays hands upon his neighbour's property ; making large use of their labours who have gone before him, so large that it has been sometimes urged as a diminution of his own proper fame. But against how many poets of the foremost rank might the same charge be brought. Chaucer uses Gower as if he had been a hewer of wood and drawer of water for him. Whatever Shakespeare found ready to his hand, and promising to serve his turn, he entered upon it as his own rightful possession. It is not the amount of his prede- cessor's toils which a poet employs, but the pro- portion which this holds to that which he has of his own, by which we must judge whether his position in the kingdom of art is affected thereby or not. He who knows that, if need were, he could produce as good, or better, of his own, enters fearlessly and without diminution to his own honours bn the stored treasures of those who have gone before him. He has a great work to do; and all that will save him labour and time in the doing is welcome, not to his indolence, nor to any desire in him to array himself in other men's garments, and adorn 58 THE GENIUS OF CALDERON. [CH. himself with other men's plumes; but welcome as giving him freer scope and larger room for his own exertion. He is a plagiary, who has bor- rowed but once, if that one borrowing consti- tutes the whole of his wealth, and that which, being withdrawn from him, would leave him nothing. He is no plagiary, who has appro- priated a thousand times, if these appropriations are still in entire subordination to his own native wealth. What free use was made, for example, by Milton of all which he had ever read; but yet it would not leave him perceptibly poorer, if this all were recovered from him. In this matter of entering upon other men's labours, the liberty among poets is permitted to the rich, which is denied to the poor. But this is not all. In truly creative periods of literature, when extensive regions are being added day by day to its empire, it is ever ob- servable that there are no such rigid and anxious lines of demarcation between mine and thine, as in more artificial and less genially productive epochs. It is not then as when every poet and poetaster counts that he has his own little domain of reputation to defend, his own little credit for originality to uphold. There is a large and liberal giving and taking, and this with leave or II.] THE GEXIUS OF CALDERON. 5p without leave, of which it is difficult at other times to form a conception. Whatever has been, already done is felt to be more the common pro- perty of all, than the single possession of any one. The individual author falls out of sight in the general national mind of which he is the utterance and the voice. In that mind and from it he has found his inspiration, and whatever he has uttered belongs more to all than to one. He has thrown it into the common stock; and henceforth it is there for others to employ, for each who can j ustify his use, by improving upon it while he uses. In another matter Calderon is less to be de- fended ; I mean in a certain excess of the intel- lectual faculty in the disposition and carrying out of his plots. They are calculated overmuch ; * there is so accurate and premeditated a balancing of part against part, so fine and curious a dove- tailing, that, ingenious as it ever, marvellous as it sometimes is, still there is felt in it too much of calculation, too little of passion. It has de- * It is impossible therefore that Voltaire could have more entirely missed the mark than he has done, when speaking of Calderon's drama, he has said, "C'est la nature abandonnee a elle-meme." The words are adopted in the article on Calderon in the Biographic Universelle. 60 THE GENIUS OP CALDERON. [CH. generated sometimes into that which almost looks like trick. The symmetrical is attained, but attained by means which lie too plainly on the surface ; it is the symmetry of artifice, which betrays itself at once as such ; and not the latent symmetry, which, lying so much deeper, will often look like confusion and disorder at the first. Strange as it may sound, when compared to a frequent estimate of his poetical character, there are plays of Calderon which remind one of nothing so much as of a Dutch garden, where every alley has its alley corresponding, and every tree is nodding to its brother. It was not indeed possible for him, arriving as he did at the latter end of a great burst of poetry, to be other than a self-conscious poet. This burst of poetry had now lasted so long, had produced so many poetical masterpieces which invited study, had enjoyed such ample time for reflecting upon itself, and upon the means by which its effects were brought about, that self- consciousness had become inevitable. Of many a great artist it is difficult to think that he knew, however Ms genius may have known, the methods by which he attained his glorious suc- cesses. It is impossible to believe this for a moment of Calderon. He knew them, and, as it II.] THE GENIUS OF CALDERON. 6 1 sometimes seems to one, knew them only too well. In fact he not merely concluded an era; but it would not be too much to affirm of him, that he hastened its conclusion ; leaving as he did so little possible for those who came after. Every device and resource of his art, moral and material, had been pushed by him as far as it would go, had attained its very utmost limits. The rose of dramatic art in him was full blown, so fully blown, so near being overblown, that there remained nothing for its leaves b\it to fall. It would be altogether unjust to him to affirm that he corrupted the taste of his fellow-country- men; but still he had accustomed them to such rich and gorgeous gratification at once of eye and ear, that those who came after found only two alternatives before them, in each of which the certainty of failure was for them equally bound up. Either, conscious of the inferiority of their genius, they might creep near the ground with low and timid flight a course which the high-raised expectation of their hearers would not now endure ; or else they might emulate his flight, when they became ridiculous, attempting that which only such genius as his could justify or carry through, their waxen wings miserably failing them so soon as they endeavoured to soar 62 THE GENIUS OF CALDERON. [CH. into that empyrean region, where he had securely held his way. They chose for the most part this, the more ambitious course, but one in which their failure was the more signal. It has been well observed, "His popularity hastened the fall of the drama, by quickening a vulgar appetite for the pleasures of the eye, and his example brought into vogue a class of pieces written for scene-painters and machinists which reached the height of absurdity in the pieces of Salvo and Ocampo a few years afterwards. On the whole the genius, modified by the fortune of Calderon, has been truly said to have given the drama the last advance of which it was capable, but at the same time to have placed it, by the means taken to this end, on a summit from which nothing but descent was possible in any direction."* "The poet stands," as Goethe has excellently well observed, " on the threshold of over-culture."t Nor can it be denied that it is sometimes pos- sible to trace in his works the influences of that particular world in which he moved. We re- cognize the court-poet, the poet of the Buen * Athenaeum, Nov. 26, 1853. t Der Dichter steht an der Schwelle der Uebercultur. II.] THE GENIUS OF CALDERON. 63 Retire ; though not indeed to such an extent as seriously to affect his popular, universal charac- ter. He had strength enough to resist the baneful influences, the narrowing tendencies which such a position, and the necessity of often pre- paring what would be acceptable to his royal and courtly hearers there, might easily have exerted upon "him j nor does he desert seriously, nor for long, the broad popular basis on which alone a national drama can repose. Still it must be owned that he moves at times in an artificial, merely conventional world ; and this his greatest admirers ought not to refuse to confess.* It is true that this same familiarity with courts, and the life of courts, brought a certain compensation with it. How complete the self- possession of all his characters to which this ac- complishment of self-possession would naturally belong. With what graceful ease, with what high-bred courtesy, they know ever how to say the right thing at the right time. What perfect * Goethe (Werke, Paris, 1836, b. 3. p. 316) : Eine vollige Gleichstellung mit dem spanischen Theater kann ich nirgends billigen. Der herrliche Calderon hat so viel Con- ventionelles, dass einem redlichen Beobachter schwer wird, das grosse Talent des Dichters durch die Theateretiquette durchzuerkennen. 64 THE GENIUS OF CALDERON. [CH. gentlemen his youthful gallants are in their friendships, their quarrels, and their love- makings. Still Calderon was, beyond a doubt, exposed to a danger on this side, and one which he has not altogether escaped. The injurious consequences of this position which he occupied, are also manifested in the occasional choice by him of subjects, which evidently attracted him not on account of their inward poetic worth, nor of any strong sympathy of his genius with them, but only or chiefly be- cause of the ample room and opportunity for pompous spectacle and show which they afforded. In search of these the poet sometimes a little wanders out of the true paths of a severer art, and consents to minister rather to the sense than to the spirit. The court claimed splendid festal pieces, giving room for startling effects, unlocked for transformations, long-drawn processions, and he did not refuse to produce them. Yet I fancy that he sometimes laboured here with no willing mind. In some of these, above all in some of his gorgeous mythological pieces, it will be evident, I think, to a close observer, that he felt his bondage, and found vent for a latent displeasure in a certain irony with which he treats his whole argument. The assumption of this ironical posi- II.] THE GENIUS OF CALDERON. 65 tion in respect of his theme, is at other times wholly alien from him. In these pompous shows Calderon had, and plainly felt that he had, the resources of the royal purse on which he might freely draw. The lengthened stage directions which in two or three cases accompany his grand spectacle plays, involve the most complicated arrangements. A famous Italian machinist especially presided over this department ; and the demands which the poet made upon him must have tasked his skill to the uttermost. The cost of adequately pro- ducing some of these scenic splendours must have been enormous. But in truth the prodigal ex- penditure of the court of Philip the Fourth upon its pride and its pleasures seems to have known no stint and no limits. One might suppose that it would have sometimes been a little restrained by a sense of shame. But no ; the whole ma- chine of state might be in danger of standing still, or breaking up, for lack of the most needful funds ; armies in the Netherlands, long unpaid, might be in actual revolt, threatening to turn, or indeed turning, their arms against their em- ployers ; but the magnificent and ruinous splen- dours of the court appear never to have known diminution or abatement. F 66 THE GENIUS OP CALD EROS'. [CH. Now and then, too, in some of these courtly pieces the poet glorifies his royal patron beyond the warrant of the truth. Yet here it will be only just to remember that in many accomplishments Philip the Fourth was eminent. What his merits as a poet were may be doubtful ; but he certainly wrote his own language purely and well ; he possessed considerable skill in painting ; he was a graceful rider, was bold and fearless in the chase. Thus a very long and gorgeous passage occurs in The Scarf and the Flower, in which, after a magnificent description of the horse, the poet extols the horsemanship, of the king, and claims for him the foremost honours as the best and boldest rider of his time. This might seem a piece of egregious flattery; but when Calderon, anticipating this charge of adu- lation, puts it at the same time somewhat proudly from him, on the ground that in nothing he ex- ceeded the truth,* he is quite borne out in this by cotemporary authority. To appeal to the many equestrian pictures of Philip by Velazquez, in which he and his steed so well become one another, might not indeed of itself be sufficient ; Que como este afecto sea Verdad en mi, y no lisonja, No importa que lo parezca. II.] THE GEXIUS OF CALDEROX. 67 for the pencil of the painter might have flattered as well as the pen of the poet ; but "we have it on the authority of the great master of equitation, the Duke of Newcastle, that he was absolutely the best horseman in all Spain;"* while his skill and daring in the chase are in like measure raised above all doubt. Calderon is, and probably will remain, the last great poet of Romanism. Saying this, I would not imply that there have not been since his time poets of considerable mark, who have been serious and earnest in their allegiance to the Church of Rome; Filicaja and Manzoni would refute me, if I made any assertion of the kind ; nor yet that there may not be such again ; but he is, I am persuaded, the last great poet who will have found in the Roman Catholic as distinguished from, and, alas! sometimes as contrasted with, the universally Christian, any portion of the motive powers of his poetry ; who will so believe in and live by this, that he shall be able in return to shed around it the glories of his own art. There will be abundance of os- * Stirling, Velazquez and his Works, p. 85, who refers to the treatise of the Duke, A new Method to dress Horses, &c., p. 8. P 2 68 THE GENIUS OF CALDEKON. [CH. tentatiously Romanist art, poetical and other. There will be many a scornful challenge " See what we can believe how much more than you, poor unbelieving Protestants; what sources of inspiration are open to us, which are for ever closed to you." But that which the challengers produce will not for a moment impose on the discerning ; and the artist, at bottom as incre- dulous in respect of his legend or his miracle as those whom he affects to despise, will be re- warded with hearers or spectators as incredulous as himself. But while I say this of Calderon, it must not be understood as implying that his inspirations were predominantly Romanist as distinguished from Christian. Whatever is uni- versally Christian in him or in any other is for all time; and this, I am persuaded, despite of all that Southey, Sismondi, and others have affirmed to the contrary, so far in him exceeds the distinctively Romanist, that he will hold his ground and maintain his place in the august synod of the great " heirs of memory," whose repu- tation is for all time : nay, at each reconsideration of his claims he is likely on the whole to take a I higher, and not a lower, place than that which he occupied before. If on some points the orb of his fame must decrease, it will increase on others., II.] THE GENIUS OP CALDEROJf. 69 On some it is true it must decrease; he already suffers, and as the great stream of faith and passion recedes further from Rome, will suffer still more, from having committed himself so far to that, which will every day be more plainly overlived; and will by more be aban- doned. There will thus be the need in reading him of large abatements and allowances. There will be that in him wherein an ever larger number of readers will sympathize coldly; there will be that wherein they will sympathize not at all; there will be that against which their whole moral soul and being will protest and revolt. Thus to say a word on this last point. What were that " Pecca fortiter," even sup- posing it meant, which it does not in the least, " Sin strongly, that so grace may abound" what were that, as compared with Calderon's theology in his Devotion of tJie Cross despite of all its perversity a wonderful and terrible drama, but the very sublime of antinomianism ?* Its hero Eusebio, after various disorders takes to the mountains, becomes in the end a robber, a mur- * With this Tirso de Molina's El Condenado por Des- coiifiado deserves to be compared. There is an interesting analysis of this very remarkable play in Schack's Gescli. d. Dramat. Literatur in Spanien, b. 2. pp. 602 606. 7O THE GENIUS OF CALDERON. [CH. derer, and a ravisher. He has never, however, amid all his crimes renounced his devotion to the Cross, nor yet his confidence that on the ground of this he shall be ultimately saved, as accordingly in the end he is.* A thoughtful man must, I think, be often deeply struck with the immeasurable advantage for being the great poet of all humanity, of all ages and all people, which Shakespeare possessed in being a Protestant. At the first blush of the matter there is a temptation to conclude other- wise ; to think of him as at a disadvantage, shut out, as he thus was, from the rich mythology, the gorgeous symbolism, the manifold legend, and from many other sources of interest which a poet of the Roman Catholic Church would com- mand. But whatever losses might thereby be his, whatever springs and sources of poetry might be closed to him on this account, all this was countervailed by far greater gains. And if the loftiest poetry is not merely passion and imagination, but these moving in the sphere of * It must not be supposed that Eusebios belong merely to the region of imagination. Powell Buxton (see his Memoirs, 1848, p. 488) visited in the prisons of Civita Yecchia, a famous Italian bandit, Gasparoni, who, having committed two hundred murders, had yet never committed one upon a Friday. II.] THE GENIUS OF CALDERON. 71 highest truth, it could not have been otherwise. And these gains will every day be more evident. For thus nothing in him through the course of time becomes incredible, nothing is overlived. The tide of human faith and passion, which upbears so proudly the rich argosies that he has launched upon it, will never ebb, and leave them helplessly stranded on an abandoned shore, but will rather mount higher and higher still. Assu- redly it is a weakness in Schiller, and one fitly rebuked in one of Mrs. Browning's noblest poems, that he should wail over the vanished " Gods of Hellas;" as though the extinction of faith in them had closed any springs of inspiration for the world, or left it poorer in the materials of poetry than before. To regard the matter only from a poet's point of view, what can be so poetical as highest truth and reason? If poetry be anything but a brainsick dream, to bewail the vanishing of ought which, even while we bewail, we know to have been wholly or partially untrue, is con- tradictory and idle. Are we not bound by every obligation to believe that, however appearances may seem otherwise, however severe or stern or even homely it may show for a while, the truest will yet in the end prove the most beautiful, and therefore the most poetical, of all 1 72 THE GENIUS OF CALDEKON. [CH. A comparison has been sometimes instituted between Calderon and Shakespeare, by friends of Calderon and by enemies the friends as injudi- cious, as the enemies xinjust. Why cannot he be taken for himself? Why thrust him into a com- parison and competition from which he and every man must suffer? Why cannot a rich ornamental garden be beautiful, because a mag- nificent landscape is more beautiful still ? With what reason can be demanded from him that which the clear unclouded south, which a Ro- mance language, which the Roman Catholic religion can never give ? Nationality, language, faith, made him very different ; and the same causes which have made the North of Europe the seat of the Reformation, the seat also of all the stronger thinking as well as the more earnest doing of modern Europe, have contributed to make our English poet far greater than the Spanish ; our greatest far greater than theirs. But set him beside any other of our Elizabethan dramatists, and although his merits and theirs are so disparate as scarcely to allow of compa- rison, yet if such were made, he certainly would not suffer by it. In one thing I cannot help noting the immense superiority of Calderon not merely over them, II.] THE GENIUS OP CALDERON. 73 but the advantage which he has even over Shakespeare himself; who is an offender, though a very slight one as compared with his cotempora- ries, in the point to which I allude. It is the entire absence of grossness, of indecency, of double entendre from his plays. The morality which he inculcates may sometimes be questionable or more than questionable, but in this matter he is nearly or quite without reproach. The wit of his valets and waiting- worn en is sometimes forced and insipid enough, but he never seeks to spice it with indecency.* Speeches which, considering who they are that utter them, what lovely and pure-minded women, surprise us once or twice in Shakespeare almost as much as the red mouse leaping out of the fair girl's mouth surprised Faust, no where occur in him. It is honorable to a Spanish audience that they did not demand this unworthy condiment, as is sufficiently at- tested by Calderon's immense popularity ; that they could bear it, the comedies of Tirso de Molina abundantly prove. It is only in consistency with the profounder * See some excellent remarks on this subject in an able article on Calderon in Blackwood's Magazine, Dec. 1839, p. 729. 74 THE GENIUS OF CALDERON. [cH. thoughtfulness, the more introverted eye of the great English dramatist, that in him the action is subservient to the character, while in Calderon the character is subservient to the action. In Shakespeare you are more concerned with what his people are, in Calderon with what they do. Of course this is not to be pushed on either side too far ; Shakespeare often interests with his plots ; to Calderon was by no means denied the power of drawing characters. Of the drama of Shake- speare it has been said, " The soul of man is the subject of its delineation ; the action and the circumstances of the piece are entirely subordi- nate and subservient to the displaying of the passions and affections of the persons repre- sented. The interest of the piece, though some- times most skilfully maintained, is nevertheless a secondary object." When the same writer* goes on to say, " In the Spanish theatre it is exactly the reverse ; the interest is everything, the characters comparatively are nothing," this, having its truth, is yet too strongly put. In Shakespeare, again, where everything is wonderful, there is yet perhaps nothing more wonderful than the way in which characters Quarterly Rcvieic, vol. 25. p. 3, The Spanish Drama. II.] THE GENIUS OF CALDERON. 75 grow before our eyes, as the action of the drama proceeds. It is not merely that he gradually shows us more fully and from more various points of view what they are ; but with the advance of the action his persons are different from what they were when it commenced ; they are in pro- cess of becoming. As in actual life no character stands still, but all are changing, are either grow- ing worse or better, so it is in the mimic life of his stage. You note, for instance, in his plays which have 1 to do with our civil wars, the Eng- lish barons growing worse and worse, more un- scrupulous, more cruel, more treacherous, more vindictive at every step ; the poet thus unobtru- sively showing the hideous moral effects of such wars upon those who are engaged in them. Or again you see in Margaret of Anjou the forward flirt passing into the unfaithful wife, and the un- faithful wife into the cursing hag. Calderon is not wholly without this, but there is compara- tively little of it in him, Goethe has observed this ; in Calderon, he says, you have the hands of the clock as they are seen upon the dial-plate, but in Shakespeare all the inner works as well. Or more exactly to this point he has observed, in a piece of criticism on the Spanish poet, which, brief as it is, is the profoundest and most satis- 76 THE GENIUS OP CALDERON. [CH. fying that has yet been written, In Calderon you have the wine as the last artificial result of the grape, but expressed into the goblet, highly spiced and sweetened, and so given you to drink; but in Shakespeare you have the whole natural process of its ripening besides, and the grapes themselves one by one for yoiir enjoyment if you will.* I must not leave the points of contact or op- position between Shakespeare's drama and Cal- deron' s, without a word or two on the names which they severally have given to their plays. It is not a great matter, nor yet altogether a small one, by what names a poet designates his productions ; and it cannot be but that many must have admired the poetical, the witty, the proverbial, the alliterative, the antithetic charac- * Shakspeare reicht uns die Tolle reife Traube vom Stock, wir mogen sie nun beliebig Beere fiir Beere geniessen, sie auspressen, keltern, als Most, als gegohrnen Wein kosten oder schliirfen, auf jede Weise sind wir erquickt. Bei Calderon dagegen ist dem Zuschauer, dessen Wahl und Wollen nichts xiberlassen ; wir empfangen abgezogenen, hochst rectificirten Weingeist, mit manchen Spezereien gescharft, mit Sussigkeiten gemildert ; wir miissen den Trank einnehmen, wie er ist, als schmackhaftes kostliches Reizmittel, oder ihn abweisen. Goethe is here reviewing a German translation of The Daughter of the Air. (WfrJce, Paris, 1836, b. 5. p. 61.) II.] THE GENIUS OF CALDERON. 77 ter of the titles of so many among Shakespeare's plays, no less than the music with which they often haunt the ear ; thus, A Midsummer Night's Dream All's Well t/iat ends Well Love's La- bours Lost Measure for Measure the name itself being no unworthy herald of that which is to follow, and oftentimes summing it all up ; and though not revealing beforehand, yet afterwards clearly declaring the intentions of the poet. Calderon also is singularly felicitous in his titles, and in them, I think, often reminds one of Shake- speare ; they almost always possess a point ; in their narrow compass poetry and wit and proverb and antithesis all by turns find room. They attract the reader, and rouse his curiosity,* con- taining oftentimes the true key to the poet's mean- ing. Let me adduce the following in proof Life's a Dream The Two Lovers of Heaven The Fairy Lady The Loud Secret Weep, Woman, and conquer Beware of still Waters White Hands cannot hurt The Worst is not always True Loved and Hated The Gaoler of * On the titles of Calderon's plays, as well as on other matters connected with the subject, there are some good observations in a little essay by Heiberg, De Poeseos dramatics genere Hispanico, prcesertim, de Calderone Dissert. Inavguralis, Hafnias, 1817. p. 16. 78 THE GENIUS OF CALDERON. [CH. II. Himself- Every one for Himself, and it is the same with a vast number of others.* * Let me adduce one other isolated point of contact in a note. The shrewd, sensible, worldly, and yet from time to time better than worldly, wisdom which Polonius bestows on his son, now going out into life, is familiar to all. I do not adduce what follows, spoken on exactly a like occasion, as its match, yet none I think can read this without being reminded of that, nor without acknowledging that this too was well and worthily said. It is the peasant magistrate, the Mayor of Zalamea, in Calderon's play of the same name (see p. 41) who speaks ; I avail myself of Mr. Fitzgerald's version : "By God's grace, boy, thou com'st of honorable if of humble stock ; bear both in mind, so as neither to be daunted from trying to rise, nor puffed up so as to be sure to fall. How many have done away the memory of a defect by carrying themselves modestly ; while others again have gotten a blemish only by being too proud of being born withou^ one. There is a just humility that will maintain thine own dignity, and yet make thee in- sensible to many a rub that galls the proud spirit. Be courteous in thy manner, and liberal of thy purse ; for 'tis the hand to the bonnet and in the pocket that make friends in this world ; of which to gain one good, all the gold the sun breeds in India, or the universal sea sucks down, were a cheap purchase. Speak no evil of women ; I tell thee the meanest of them deserves our respect ; for of women do not we all come ? Quarrel with no one but with good cause ; by the Lord, over and over again, when I see masters and schools of arms among us I say to myself, ' This is not the thing we want at all, How to fight, but Why to fight, that is the lesson we want to learn. And I verily believe if but one master of the Why to fight adver- tised among us, he would carry off all the scholars.' " I CHAPTER III. THE GENIUS OF CALDERON. (HIS AUTOS.) HA YE spoken more than once of the admi- ration of Augustus Schlegel for Calderori. While he extends this admiration to all his works, he has reserved his most enthusiastic praise, the loftiest flights of his most passionate eloquence, for the setting out of the glories of his autos. In these he sees, and perhaps justly, the most signal evidences of the poet's genius, his truest title-deeds to immortality.* The passage, * Martin Panzano, an Aragonese priest settled in Italy, who about the middle of the last century -wrote a brief work in defence of Spanish literature, which he thought unduly depreciated abroad, has expressed himself in the same lan- guage. Speaking of Calderon he says (De ffispanorum Literaturd, Turin, 1758, p. 75) : Certe inter primi sub- sellii poe'tas clarissimum hunc virum adnumerandum, nemo unus qui ejus libros legerit inficiabitur ; prsesertim si acta quse vulgo sacramentalia vocantur diligenter examinet ; in quibus neque in inyeniendo acumen, nee in disponendo ratio, neque in ornando aut venustas, aut nitor, aut majestas desiderabitur. 80 THE GENIUS OP CALDERON. [CH. which occurs in the Dramatic Lectures, has been often and justly admired ; although it must be confessed that, despite of all the pomp and mag- nificence of words which he casts over his theme, the reader not otherwise instructed rises up having learned exceedingly little of what these are, or what in them deserves the praise which sounds to him so extravagant. Auto, or Act, was a name given at the first to almost any kind of dramatic composition ; but in the nourishing period of the Spanish drama was restricted to religious compositions; nor would it be given to all of these, but only to representations in which allegorical persons found place, and which were acted at certain chief festivals of the Church. Like each other form of drama which Calderon made his own, it was already, when he arose, a national pro- duction, and one deeply rooted in the affec- tions of the nation, as a Christian, and still more as a Roman Catholic, people. He only carried to its highest perfection, and gave its crowning development to, a form of composition which had existed, though certainly in shapes very different from those which it assumed under his hands, almost as long as modern Spain had any literature whatever. For with all its III.] THE GENIUS OF CALDERON. 8 1 complex construction, it is yet legitimately de- scended from the rude medieval mysteries ; sacred shows, in which, on certain chief festivals of the Church, it was sought to teach the people through their eyes as well as through their ears the leading facts of Scripture history, above all of the life of Christ and of his saints. " Miracle plays" these were commonly called with us, and sometimes " mysteries" a name borrowed from the French, and in modern times generally supposed, but erroneously,* to have been given to them because they set forth the great mysteries of the faith. We have indeed in these rude religious enter- tainments the germs of the modern drama; for, strange as it may sound to some, it is yet certain that the whole modern drama, not in Spain only, but throughout all Europe, grew up under the wing of the Church, and only gradually detached itself from it.t Like the Greek drama, it was reli- gious, and part of a religious service, at its com- mencement. The process of this its detachment is not very difficult to trace. At the first the Church had availed herself gladly of that love of * See p. 83. J- On this matter see Alt, Theater und Kirche in ihrem gegenseitigen VerTialtniss historiich dargestettt, 8vo, Berlin, 1846. G 82 THE GENIUS OF CALDERON. [CH. dramatic representation, which is so marked a characteristic of all nations at certain epochs of their intellectual and social development ; until, that is, it is killed, or rather its place supplied, by the abundance of books, and the widely diffused power of reading. With rude and ignorant populations, needing to be instructed in the great facts of sacred history, inaccessible through books, craving excitements in the place of those with which their heathen religions once supplied them, needing to be weaned, if possible, from profane feasts and songs and dances by better entertainments, she did not disdain to avail herself of the help which in this quarter she found. The thing grew up indeed, almost before she was aware, out of the desire vividly to set forth the great truths by which she was ani- mated, the great facts of which she was the bearer. It is not too much to say that in the responses and antiphonies of her service, in the processions within the church and outside of it, in the change of persons and dresses during the service, in the alternation of the recitative (di- cere), and the choir (cantare), in the scenic imita- tions of the cradle and all its accompaniments at Bethlehem, in this and much else of the same kind, there lay already the germs of the drama. III.] THE GENIUS OF CALDERON. 83 It is no place here to follow out the steps by which these germs were gradually unfolded, nor yet to trace the further steps by which, as was inevitable, various scandals and offences arose, which might well create a misgiving in respect of the prudence of allow- ing this to proceed any further. These sacred representations, begun in good faith and in simplicity, and as veritable Biblia Pauperum for a rude and ignorant people, after a while de- generated more and more into mere shows and spectacles, no helpers but hinderers to devotion ; they were attended with a thousand inconve- niences and unseemlinesses, as in the fact that the priests were at once the authors and actors,* * Though the word mystery is spelt as though it were connected with mysterium and pvffTripiov, there can be no doubt that we derived the word from the French, and that in the French it is more accurately spelt mistere than mystere, being derived from ministerium, and having its name because the ministri Ecclesise conducted it. When at a later period these representations were employed, not merely for setting out the facts of the sacred history, but by aid of allegorical personages the mysteries of Christian theology, nothing lay nearer than to make the name signi- ficant of the intention, and to suppose that it was meant to be so. It is the same process of modifying the spelling, or even the shape, of a word under a wrongly assumed etymology, which has occurred innumerable times, and is one of the most potent forces in the transformation of words. O 2 84 THE GENIUS OP CALDERON. [CH. the places of representation churches and cathe- drals ; and no where were they more fruitful of scandals than in Spain. Those who flocked to wit- ness these spectacles after a while craved coarser excitements, and there were found some who were willing to provide for them these. Scurrile jests, profane songs, low buffooneries, forced their way into these compositions, and were often mixed up in the strangest manner with the very most sacred things of all. Thus in the evangelical history itself the merchant who sold the spices to the holy women, the gardener for whom our blessed Lord was mistaken by the Magdalene, the host of the inn at Emmaus, all became fixed comic characters, and made untimely merriment for the spectators. Many Church rulers, among these Innocent the Third deserves honorable mention, were very much in earnest that these scandals should cease. Council after Council took the matter in hand; some absolutely prohibiting these spec- tacles; others giving to them a limited tole- ration, and attempting to define exactly what kind of representations should be allowed within the sacred walls, and what forbidden. These limitations were eluded; things invariably re- turned presently to their old course ; and thus III.] THE GENIUS OF CALDERON. 85 toward the end of the sixteenth century, in 1565, it was in Spain found necessary definitively to prohibit clerks taking any share in these reli- gious plays, or allowing them to go forward within the sacred precincts. A way was found however by which the people should not be absolutely deprived of what they so eagerly craved. A compromise was effected. The mys- teries should still continue, but not any more conducted by the officers of the Church, nor within the sacred walls, nor as a part of divine service ; while yet at the same time the Church did not disown them altogether, nor quite cut off their connexion with herself. These plays still maintained their relation to certain great festivals; they were still performed at the bid- ding, and with the sanction of the ecclesiastical authorities; these also defraying their cost. Of the secular drama I am not speaking now ; that went its own way; independent of the Church; sometimes in opposition to, and opposed by it ; as in Spain, where more than once all dramatic re- presentations except directly religious were suspended for a considerable period ; but of the religious, which thus was still related,* though * A curious result and evidence of this was that the autos, though acted in the broad daylight, and indeed ia 86 THE GENIUS OP CALDERON. [oil. the bands which bound it were somewhat re- laxed, to the Church. Lope de Vega took possession of this, as he did of every other form of national poetry, culti- vating and carrying it far higher than he found it. He did much for it, but he left much also for his successors, Calderon above all, to do. The auto, as managed by him, fell very short in completeness, in depth and in beauty, of that which in Calderon's hands it afterwards became. This last found in the distinctly religious drama that which met all the requirements of his soul. His two vocations of dramatist and priest were here at length reconciled in highest and most harmonious atonement, and from the finished excellence of these works in all their details he appears to have dedicated to them his utmost care, to have elaborated them with the diligence the open air, were always accompanied in the representation by an innumerable quantity of wax tapers. Thus in the inimitable Travels into Spain, by the Countess D'Aulnoy, which are for Spain in the latter half of the seventeenth century what Ford and Barrow are for Spain in the nine- teenth, describing her attendance at one of these, she says : "It was an odd sight to see a prodigious number of flamboys lighted, whilst the sunbeams were ready to scorch you to death, and melted the very wax of which they were made." III.] THE GENIUS OP CALDERQN. 87 of a peculiar love. It ought to be mentioned that long before his time the mystery or miracle play had in part given way to, had in part been blended with, the " morality;" which arose later, which had unfolded itself out of the mystery; but which differed from it in this respect, that while the other had always to do with actual persons of sacred or legendary history, in the morality allegorical persons, virtues, vices, and the like, appear on the scene, sometimes min- gling with actual historic persons, in which case the composition shares in the nature of both, sometimes to the entire exclusion of such, in which case we have a morality pure and un- mixed. As a matter of art the morality was a con- siderable advance on the miracle play. In the latter the poet, if we may so call him, was entirely subjected to his story, which he set out exactly as he found it, in successive scenes, having little or no connexion with one another; but in the morality there was no such scheme made ready to his hand; or rather, no such power of doing without any scheme. He must invent, he must combine, he must reflect. "With- out this, it would be quite impossible for him to bring ought to the birth, which would satisfy 88 THE GENIUS OF CALDERON. [CH. even the very moderate claims which the hearers and spectators of the fifteenth century made upon the author. In Calderon's autos the morality very much preponderates above the miracle play. In fact, none of them are properly this last. If we look among his compositions for the lineal descendants, though in high artistic forms, of this, we must find them in such comedias as The Purgatory of St. Patrick, or The Wonder-working Magician, mentioned already. There are on the other hand many which are pure moralities, while per- haps in more allegorical and historical personages are mingled, though this mixture is not so re- pugnant to true taste, nor yet so unmanageable, as might at first sight appear seeing that even the historic personages are for the most part typical or symbolic, as Moses for instance of the law, Adam of human nature, and thus with the rest. Enough has been already said to make the reader understand that there can be nothing easier than to give a description of the Spanish autos, of Calderon's above all, which shall pre- sent them as merely and supremely ridiculous to as many as, except from the accounts thus rendered, are entirely unacquainted with them ; III.] THE GENIUS OP CALDERON. 89 and who consequently are wholly at the beck and mercy of the scorner. Thus the Countess D'Aulnoy describes these autos as " certain poor tragedies acted upon religious subjects ;" pronounces one which she witnessed " the most impertinent piece I ever saw of this kind in all my life;" giving an outline of it, which, if we knew no more, would abundantly justify her judgment. She does not mention its name or author, but from her account it may perhaps have been The Military Orders of Cal- deron. Southey also in his Omniana and elsewhere* has not resisted the temptation of setting them, which, as I have said, is so easy, in a ridiculous light. He should not have given way to the temptation. Critics like Sismondi, who undertake to judge of poetry with all insight into anything deeper than its merest forms denied them, may give utterance to such judgments about the autos, as that which Sismondi has most naturally expressed; and if he had studied the whole seventy-two, * Commonplace Book, i nd Series, p. 253. Compare an almost incredible account of an auto which he witnessed, given by the Rev. Edward Clarke in Letters concerning the Spanish Nation, written at Madrid during the years 1760 and 1761, pp. 103 105. London, 1763. go THE GENIUS OP CALDERON. [CH. instead of the single one which with a certain candour he allows is all that he actually has perused, his judgment would not have been dif- ferent, probably his indignation against them would only have been roused to a higher pitch.* But to Southey, himself a poet, and not without audacities of his own, the beauty and grandeur of these poems ought not to have been entirely hidden. Nothing, as I have said, is easier than to win a laugh against them, and nothing slighter or shallower than the laugh so won. One has indeed for this only to enumerate the ordinary personnel of these plays, which consists of such allegorical or metaphysical persons as the follow- ing, The World, Idolatry, Heresy, Apostasy, The Will, Thought, Faith, Hope, Charity, The Synagogue, The Four Elements, The Four Sea- sons, The Five Senses, Innocence, Grace, The Prince, The Man, Lucifer; with many more of the same description, and certain Old Testament characters, most often these, Noah, Isaac, * Bouterwek (Hist, of Spanish Literature, p. 372, Ross' translation,) is not so scornful, but more inaccurate, dis- missing them in about a dozen lines, and mentioning by name only one, The Devotion of the Cross, which is not an auto at all. III.] THE GENIUS OF CALDERON. 9 1 Joseph, Moses, Job, David, Solomon, Isaiah, Daniel, Belshazzar; to these when we have added Orpheus, Perseus, Andromeda, Medusa, Psyche, the Sibyls, with other names of the Greek mythology, we shall have the usual dramatis personce of these religious plays. The bare enumeration is alone sufficient to present ample material of ridicule to one unable or unwilling to plant himself in a region of art altogether new, and alien from all those in which he may hitherto have moved.* But one who is able to plant himself there, and who cares to make closer acquaintance with these poems, will very soon be filled with quite other feelings, as this acquaintance increases. He will be filled, I fear not to say, with an endless astonishment and admiration at the skill of the poet in conquering the almost unconquer- able difficulties of his theme, at the power with which he masters and moulds the most hetero- * I am not aware that any attempt has yet been made to present a translation, or even an analysis with occasional poetical renderings, of any one of the autos to the English reader. Even the Germans, who have translated a multi- tude of Calderon's other dramas, appear generally to have shrunk from these. Ten of them, excellently rendered by J. F. von Eichendorff, Stuttgart, 1846, 1853, are all that ever I have heard of. 92 THE GENIUS OP CALDEBON. [CH. geneous materials, combining them and making them subservient to the purposes of his art, at the inexhaustible variety which he contrives by aid of new combinations to impart to materials which he may have been already compelled often to employ, at the transparent intention of his allegory, so that the inner spirit looks ever through the symbol, informs it with its own life, and leaves no doubt or hesitation about its meaning. Add to these merits, the gorgeous poetic diction, wherein he clothes the flights of an imagination, for which nothing is too bold, which dares to reach all worlds; while, greatest triumph of all, he is able to impart even a dramatic interest to that which, whatever other merits it might acquire in its treatment, seemed in its very nature incapable of this merit. But so it is; he makes his reader to follow now, as no doubt the spectator did once, with liveliest interest the fortunes of his abstract persons. This he effects, partly by his consummate skill, which has not deserted him here, in preparing and bringing about his situations, but chiefly because these persons, abstract as they are, are yet representa- tives of great and abiding interests for man. It is in one shape or another man's struggle and his temptations, his fall and his rise again, with III.] THE GENIUS OF CALDERON. 93 the wonders of redeeming love, which are set forth before our eyes. For indeed it is the Christian poet, whom in characterizing the aittos we are called primarily to contemplate; one finding his inspiration in the great mysteries of revelation and redemption. But while I say this, I would not in the least keep out of sight that Calderon, a zealous Romanist, and that too after the Spanish fashion, writes earnestly as such; sometimes therefore in the interests of his Church as distinct from, and opposite to, the interests of eternal truth. There are of these autos some which are so shot through with the threads of superstition and error that these may be said to compose their main texture and woof; for instance one, but even poetically regarded a very poor one, The Protestation of the Faith, on the reconciliation of Queen Christina with the Church of Rome. These however, are few. The springs of his inspiration are not, more than any other man's, in the errors which he holds, but in the truth. And it is not too much to say of the greater number of these mar- vellous compositions that they are hymns of loftiest praise to redeeming Love, summonses to all things which have breath to praise the Lord, and he too that writes, writes as one that has 94 THE GENIUS OF CALDERON. [OH. seen Satan fall like lightning from heaven, and rejoices in spirit with his Lord.* * Schack, in his admirable History of Dramatic Litera- ture and Art in Spain, referred to already, keeps for the most part in the cooler region of prose, yet now and then puts on his singing robes, and soars into empyreal regions, whither it is not easy to follow him ; he does so in the fol- lowing passage, in which he characterizes generally the best Spanish autos, but has evidently those of Calderon specially in his eye (b. 2. p. 398) : " Wer zuerst in den Zauberkreis dieser Dichtungen eintritt, der fiihlt sich von einem fremden Geiste angeweht, und erblickt einen anderen Himmel, der sich iiber eine andere Welt ausspannt. Es ist als ob damonische Machte uns in finsteren Sturme davontriigen ; Schwindelerregende Tiefen des Denkens thun sich auf, wunderbar-rathselhafte Gestalten einsteigen der Finster- niss, und die dunkelrothe Flamme der Mystik leuchtet in den geheimnissvollen Born hinein, aus dem alle Dinge entspringen. Aber die Nebel zertheilen sich und man sieht sich iiber die Schranken des Irdischen hinaus, jenseits von Kaum und Zeit, in das Reich des Unermesslichen und Ewigen gerissen. Hier verstummen alle Misstb'ne ; bis hierher steigen die Stimmen der Menschenwelt nur wie feierliche Hymnen, von Orgelklangen getragen, empor. Ein riesiger Dom von geistiger Architektur nimmt uns auf, in dessen ehrfurchtgebietenden Hallen kein pro- faner Ton laut zu werden wagt ; auf dem Altar thront, von magischem Licht umflossen, das Mysterium der Dreieinigkeit ; ein Strahlenglanz, wie ihn irdische Sinne kaum zu ertragen vermogen, dringt hervor und um- leuchtet die gewaltigen Saulenhallen mit einer wunder- baren Glorie. Hier sind alle Wesen in die Anschauung des Ewigen versenkt und blicken staunend in die unergrund- lichen Tiefen der gottlichen Liebe. Die ganze Schopfung III.] THE GENIUS OP CALDERON. 95 There is nothing which Calderon loves better to set forth in these autos than the manner in which all creation served man in the time of his innocence, but turns upon him directly he has sinned; rebels against him, because he has re- belled against his Lord; and will only return to its obedience, when he has returned to his own, which same is a very favourite thought with Augustine. Thus in more than one of these mysteries, the human nature appears as a royal princess, all nature, represented, it may be, by the Four Seasons, or the Four Elements, doing her willing service, and rendering to her freely, so long as she continues in her innocence and stimmt in einen Jubelchor zur Verherrlichung des Urquells alles Lebens zusammen ; selbst das Wesenlose redet und empfindet ; das Todte gewinnt Sprache und den lebendigen Ausdruck des Gedankens ; die Gestirne und Elemente, die Steine und Pflanzen zeigen Seele und Selbstbewusstsein ; die verborgensten Gedanken und Gefuhle der Menschen springen an's Licht ; Himmel und Erde strahlen in symbo- lischer Verklarung. Auch abgesehen von dem tiefen inneren Gehalt dieser Dichtungen, muss der Glanz in der Ausfuhrung des Einzelnen entziicken. Yielleicht in keinem ihrer anderen Werke haben die spanischen Dichter den poetischen Reichthum, iiber den sie, wie sonst Niemand, zu gebieten batten, so concentrirt, wie hier. Es ist ein Farbenschmelz, ein Bliithenduft und ein Zauber des entzuckendsten Wohllauts, der alle Sinne berauscht. Cf. b. 3. pp. 252 256. _ 96 THE GENIUS OP CALDERON. [CH. first state of good, homage arid obedience ; laying at her feet all the choicest offerings that they have. So soon however as she has transgressed the commandment, they all rise up against her; or, attempting to console her, prove miserable comforters, only afflicting the more. This is very sublimely brought out in The Poison and the Antidote, in The Cure and the Sickness, and again in The Painter of his own Dishonour.* The manner in which Calderon uses the Greek mythology is exceedingly interesting. He was gifted with an eye singularly open for the true religious element which, however overlaid and * A portion of this last passage, though inferior in beauty to the other, may yet be detached with slighter loss from its context. The Human Nature, which was glorying just before in the homage of all creation, is describing the diffe- rent and hostile bearing which everything now that she sinned, puts on. La Tierra tiembla, el Ayre me traspassa, El Mar me anega, el Resplandor me abrasa. Fatiga el Sol, al passo que lucia, Media la Luna alumbra, que alumbraba, El Ave me aflige, que me suspendia, La Plor me hiere, que me lisonjeaba, La Fiera, que obediente me seguia, Me huye ligera, 6 me resiste brava ; Y hasta esta Fuente, al venne fea, murmura La poca edad que vive una hermosura. III.] THE GENIUS OP CALDERON. 97 debased, is yet to be detected in all inferior forms of religion. These religions were to him the vestibules through which the nations had been guided, till they reached the temple of the absolute religion, where God is worshipped in Christ. The reaching out and feeling after an unknown true, of which he detected something even in the sun-worship of the Peruvians,* he re- cognized far more distinctly in the more human, and therefore more divine, mythology and religion of ancient Greece. It may be that the genuine Castilian alienation from the Jew, which was not wanting in him, may in part have been at work when he extols, as he so often loves to do, the superior readiness of the Gentile world, as con- trasted with the Jewish Church, to receive the proffered salvation, its greater receptivity of the truth. But whether this may have had any share in the matter or not, it is a theme to which he is constantly in these autos recurring, and which he loves under the most various aspects to present. And generally he took a manifest delight in finding or making a deeper meaning for the legends and tales of the classical world, seeing in them the symbols and uncon- * See Ms Daybreak in Copacabana, H 98 THE GENIUS OF CALDERON. [CH. scious prophecies of Christian truth. He had no misgivings, therefore, but that these would yield themselves freely to be moulded by his hands. He felt that in employing them he would not be drawing down the sacred into the region of the profane ; but elevating that which had been profaned into its own proper region and place. These legends of heathen antiquity supply the allegorical substratum for several of his autos* Now it is The True God Pan, or Perseus rescuing Andromeda, or Theseus destroying the Labyrinth, or Ulysses defying the enchantments of Circe, or the exquisite mythus of Cupid and Psyche. Each in turn supplies him with some new poetical aspect under which to contemplate the very highest truth of all. But while with the freedom and boldness of a Christian poet, who feels that all things are his, that the inheritance on which he enters is as * There is an elaborate and interesting essay on this subject, and generally on the use which Calderon makes of the classical mythology, by Leopold Schmidt in the JRhein- isckes Museum fur Philologie, 1855, pp. 315 317, under this title, Ueber Calderon's ehandlung antiker Mythen; interesting in itself; and also as showing that the interest in Calderon is still lively in Germany, and includes some of its classical scholars. III.] THE GENIUS OF CALDERON. 99 wide as the world itself, lie does not shrink from turning these to his purposes, but makes them yield up their better meaning to him, his autos rest more often upon directly sacred foundations, very frequently on facts and personages of the Old Testament which are typical of the New. Tlie Brazen Serpent, Gideon's Fleece, TJie Sheaves of Ruth, Belsfiazzar's Feast, The First and Second Isaac, The Tree of the choicest Fruit, these are the names of some, and names which will at once suggest their several arguments. Some again are the working out of New Testament parables, such for instance as Tlie Vineyard of the Lord, The Wheat and the Tares, The Hid Treasure. Others are founded on legends of the Church, as The Leprosy of Constantine; while in others scriptural and ecclesiastical alike fall into the back ground, as in T/te Great Tfieatre of the World, The World's Great Fair, and he choosey a more purely ethical treatment of his subject. Several, again, are very curious, as being doubles of secular dramas of his own, generally with the same name which those bear, and intended to furnish a key to their inner in. tention. Thus, Life's a Dream, of which an ana- lysis is given in this volume, has a duplicate bearing the same name among the autos, supply- H 2 100 THE GENIUS OF CALDERON. [CH. ing many interesting points of comparison. It is exactly the same with another, The Painter of his own Dishonour; and Andromeda and Perseus is in like manner a twice-told tale. There are cases in which the name is different, but the ar- gument is altogether the same ; only that in the auto the treatment is directly religious, which in the secular drama it was not; thus Love the greatest Enchantment is the story of Ulysses and Circe told in the one sense, The Sorceries of Sin is the same told in the other, but with most inte- resting and instructive cross-lights from the one to the other. Very worthy of note in not a few of these plays is the skill with which Calderon turns to account and makes poetry of that, which might be supposed at first a material the most stub- bornly resisting and opposing itself to any such uses as doubtless for an ordinary genius it would so prove I mean the scholastic theology, of the Church. That it is not really such, that it can supply stuff which the loftiest poetry can find akin to and ministrant to itself, which it can work up homogeneously into its own texture and woof, this Dante had abundantly shown long ago; to the understanding of whose Divine Comedy no single book, after the Vulgate, has III.] THE GENIUS OP CALDERON. IOI probably contributed gains so large as the Sum- ma Theologies of Aquinas. Nor had Calderon made his studies for nothing in the scholastic theology at Salamanca. The subtleties of it are sometimes not wanting in his worldly plays, where their introduction cannot always be justified ; in his religious there is no such appa- rent unfitness, and he often makes admirable use of this scholastic theology in them ; it does him excellent service there. Thus when The Man supposes that he can suffer one only of the Virtues to withdraw from him, he all the while retaining the rest, and that one gives its hand to another, and that one to the next, until all for- sake him who has willingly dismissed one, we have here the great scriptural truth that obedi- ence is of the whole man, that he who is guilty of one is guilty of all, that to drop one link in the golden chain of obedience is to leave it a chain no longer; but we have this truth under forms which that theology supplied. In more than one of these autos, as in The Sacred Tear of Madrid, he has a magnificent scene in which man, the pilgrim, is forgetting his pilgrim state, and would fain play the courtier at the great court of this world. The seven mortal Sins are arraying him and furnishing him 102 THE GENIUS OF CALDERON". [CH. forth, each with the several symbol of its entice- ment Pride with hat and feathers Wanton- ness with a looking-glass Avarice with a casket of jewels Gluttony with a salver of fruits Anger with a sword Envy with a cloak and hood. Or again, as in The World's Great Fair, an auto of rare depth and beauty, the man enters as a trader with his entrusted talent on the great market-place of the world, which is set out with all its enticing wares, with its false and its true, its shadows and its substances, its pebbles and its jewels, its unattractive sackcloth, its alluring purple; his Good and his Evil Genius, ever as he passes through the fair, severally sug- gesting to him that he should lay out his talent in making these or those his own. Or, again, some tale of the old mythology, as that of Circe for instance, is used for illustrating the enticements and allurements of sin, the deep entanglements of the flesh ever indeed with the most perfect purity ; the divine tact of the poet shining out as gloriously here, as Milton's in his Comus; while yet these flatteries and false- hoods of the flesh have never been set forth with a more wondrous art. In most cases, the poems are triumphant hymns of a victory which III.] THE GENIUS OF CALDERON. 103 at the last is gained over the world and sin and death. The man is saved; and even if he be entangled for a -while, he is enabled by a better strength than his own to break away at last. And it is fit that it should most frequently be so ; for these poems are intended to celebrate the mysteries of redemption. Yet it is not so always ; even as these purposes of redemption are not always fulfilled, but sometimes baffled and defeated by the pride and obstinacy of man. Sometimes, as in that sublime auto, Belshazzar's Feast, all the resources of divine love are ex- hausted in vain, and the sinner perishes in despite of them all. While thus in so many, man and man's trial and temptation occupy the foremost places of the drama, the interest revolving around him and turning on the final issues of his conflict, the Divine Helper only coming in to assist and to deliver, in others He is the protagonist, and as- sumes the foremost place in the whole. Thus is it when He as the Divine Orpheus, in the play bearing this name, goes down to hell to bring back his lost Eurydice; as Perseus slays the sea- monster and unbinds the doomed Andromeda from the rock on which she had been exposed ; 104 THE GENIUS OF CALDERON. [CH. III. or as Love delivers Psyche from all the conse- quences of her fault, helps her to surmount her trials, and at length is united to her for ever.* But I must not attempt to follow out any farther this portion of the subject. It would not be easy to exhaust all which on the matter of these autos suggests itself to be said; and I must be contented with offering to the reader, not otherwise informed, this slight and imperfect sketch of these strange and wonderful compo- sitions, and with the intention to add to this the rapid analysis of one among them, before this volume is done. * See an analysis of this last in Souther's Omniana vol. i. p. 128. .^ CHAPTER IY. CALDERON IN ENGLAND. life of Calderon was so greatly prolonged -*- that he touched, and was cotemporary with, two entirely different periods of English dra- matic literature. When he began to write, Shakespeare indeed was just dead ; but Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Massinger, Ford and Shirley, were in, or had not as yet attained, their prime. All these, as indeed the whole generation of the Elizabethan dramatists, with the exception of Shirley, died out before our Civil Wars began; but Calderon, overliving these wars, lasted on into a wholly different epoch, that of the artificial stilted tragedy, and of the comedy, in all respects more discreditable still, of the Restoration. There is no evidence that during the first of these periods any of Calderon's plays had found their way to England, or were imitated by Eng- lish writers, or that his name had been so much as heard among us. The language indeed would 106 CALDERON IN ENGLAND. [CH. have proved no barrier; on the contrary a con- siderable number of our dramatic compositions belonging to this time are founded on Spanish novels and romances; and there is abundant evidence that Spanish was during the latter half of the sixteenth and the first half of the seven- teenth century very widely known in England ; indeed far more familiar than it ever since has been. The wars in the Low Countries, in which so many of our countrymen served, the proba- bilities at one period of a match with Spain, the fact that Spanish was almost as serviceable, and scarcely less indispensable, at Brussels, at Milan, at Naples, and for a time at Vienna, not to speak of Lima and Mexico, than at Madrid itself, the many points of contact, friendly and hostile, of England with Spain for well nigh a century, all this had conduced to an extended knowledge of Spanish in England.* It was popular at court. * The number of Spanish words in English (I do not mean to say they all belong to this period, yet certainly many of them do) are a signal evidence of a lively inter- course between the nations, and familiar acquaintance on our part with the language. Such are ' alcove,' ' alligator,' 'armada,' 'armadillo,' 'barricade,' 'buffalo,' 'cambist,' 'caprice,' (the earlier spelling 'caprich' seems to indicate that we got the word from Spain, not from France or Italy, ) * carbonado,' 'cargo,' 'cigar,' 'creole,' 'don,' 'duenna,' 'em- IV.] CALDERON IN ENGLAND. 107 Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth were both ex- cellent Spanish scholars. A passage in Howell's Letters would imply that at the time of Charles the First's visit to Madrid, his Spanish was im- perfect; but at a later date, that is in 1635, a Spanish play was acted by a Spanish company before him.* The statesmen and scholars of the time were rarely ignorant of the language. We might confidently presume Ralegh's acquaint- ance with it; but in his Discovery of Guiana and other writings there is abundant proof of this. We observe the same evidence of a fami- liar knowledge of Spanish on Lord Bacon's part in the Spanish proverbs which he quotes, and in bargo,' 'flotilla,' 'gala,' 'grandee,' 'jennet,' 'mosquito,' 'mulatto,' 'negro,' 'olio,' 'palaver,' 'paragon,' 'platina,' ' parroquet,' 'punctilio,' 'renegado,' 'savannah,' 'sherry,' 'strappado,' 'tornado,' 'vanilla,' 'verandah.' To these may be added some which, having held their place awhile in the language, have now disappeared from it again. Such are ' quirpo' (cuerpo) a jacket fitting quite close to the body, ' quellio' (cuello) a collar or ruff, 'flota,' the constant name for the yearly fleet from the Indies, 'matachin,' a sword-dance, 'privado,' a prince's favourite, one admitted into his privacy; ' reformado,' an officer for the present out of employment, but retaining his rank ; ' alferez,' an ensign ; none of which are of unfrequent occurrence in our literature of the seventeenth century. * Collier, History of English Dramatic Poetry, 1831, vol. 2. p. 69. I08 CALDERON IN ENGLAND. [CH. the fine observation which occasionally he makes on a Spanish word.* It was among the many accomplishments of Archbishop Williams, who, when the Spanish match was pending, caused the English Liturgy to be translated under his own eye into Spanish, f The language therefore would have opposed no barrier; yet it is not till after the Resto- ration that any traces of acquaintance with Cal- deron on the part of English writers appear. Little or nothing however came of this acquaint- ance then; as the genius was wanting on the part of our playwrights to create poetry of their own, so was it wanting to profit by the creations of others. Elvira or The worst not always true, by the Earl of Bristol, is a very poor recast of Calderon's comedy of the same name;J one from which all the grace and charm of the original has departed. Another piece in Dodsley's Collection, The Adventures of five Hours, which one Crown translated at the desire of Charles the Second, is * Thus on desenvoltura in his Essay On Fortune. f" Hacket's Life of Archbishop Williams, part i. p. 127. For proofs of Ben Jonson's Spanish, if there needed such, see The Alchemist, Act 4, Sc. i and 2. J See Dodsley's Collection of Old Plays, vol. 12. pp. 127 2 12. Its date is 1667. IV.] CALDERON IN ENGLAND. 109 a Spanish piece, but is not Calderon's, as is erroneously asserted in the preliminary remarks. Dry den's Mock Astrologer, which appeared in 1668,* is drawn directly from Le Feint Astro- logue of the younger Conieille, but not without comparison on the English poet's part with Corneille's original, El Astrologo Fingido of Calderon. Dryden, in that same spirit of strange delusion which, in respect of the worth of his own and his cotemporaries' dramatic compo- sitions, seemed always to possess him, ventures on the following assertion, " I will be so vain to say, it has lost nothing in my hands." (p. 229.) Never was poet more mistaken; it has lost the elegance, the fancy, everything which was worth retaining; its gains being only in ribaldry, double entendre, and that sort of coarse impurity in which unhappily Dryden so much delighted ; a sort which fortunately in great part defeats itself, being very much more calculated to turn the stomach than to kindle the passions. His plays are indeed, as a German critic has styled them, "incredibly bad," their moral tone and their art being about on an equality of badness, so that they appear, I confess, to me quite un- * Works, (Sir Walter Scott's edit.) vol. 3, p. 207, sqq. 110 CALDERON IN ENGLAND. [CH. deserving that toleration, and sometimes much more than toleration, which Sir Walter Scott has extended to them. During the eighteenth century Calderon's name is, I should suppose, hardly mentioned, or only mentioned in the slightest and most inaccu- rate way, in English books. One comedy I am aware of which the author announces as a trans- lation* from him; but of no other point of con- tact between him and our English literature during the century. In fact, for a long period Don Quixote was supposed to be Spanish litera- ture ; and, as we esteemed, we had here not the man unius libri, but in a somewhat different sense, the nation. The Schlegels were the earliest to waken up any new interest about him. This they did first in Germany, and the same has since extended, though very faintly indeed, to England. They effected this, Augustus William by his Spanish Theatre, which in fact is a translation of five plays of Calderon;t by his Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature;* and Frederic by his History of Ancient and Modern * 'TiswelliCs no worse, London, 1770, from Calderon's El Escondido y la Tapada. f Berlin, 1803 1809. J Heidelberg, 1809 1811. IV.] CALDERON IN ENGLAND. Ill Literature* One of the first in England whose attention was attracted to Calderon was Shelley, who in one of his letters, with date Dec. 1819, preserved to us in Leigh Hunt's Lord Byron and his Cotemporaries, expresses himself thus: " Some of the ideal dramas of Calderon with which I have lately, and with inexpressible wonder and delight become acquainted, are per- petually tempting me to throw over their perfect and glowing forms the grey veil of my own words." Various articles have since appeared from time to time in our leading periodicals,t either seeking to take the measure of Calderon's genius, or presenting actual specimens of it, in more than one case entire dramas : and in this way, or in independent volumes, a considerable number of his plays have been made accessible to the English reader, who however has never been persuaded to take any lively interest in the literature thus brought within his reach. The * Vienna, 1815. j* As one in the Quarterly Review, April, 1821. This, with another in Blackwood, Dec. 1839, an< ^ a third in tne Westminster and Foreign Qiiarterly, Jan. 1851, are, with one exception of which I shall speak presently, the best general articles on Calderon of which I know ; although none of them can be considered wholly satisfactory. 112 CALDERON IN ENGLAND. [CH. deeper reasons of this indifference, the causes which will always hinder his finding any very cordial reception in England, I will not attempt to enter upon. They lie deep ; and the best explanation of them I know is to be found in two masterly articles in The Atkenceum on Calderon,* written with a more intimate know- ledge of their subject than anything else with which in English I am acquainted. Other difficulties which will hinder his ob- taining a home among us, or admiration from those who do not read him in his own language, are more external, yet they are not less real. They respect the forms which translations from the Spanish theatre must assume, and involve practical questions which do not receive an easy solution. While one or two metres predominate in the Spanish drama, it claims for itself the right of unlimited variety; and there is, I believe, no metre which the language in other compo- sitions has allowed and adopted, which does not find its occasional place here; even the sonnet itself is not excluded. At the same time the main staple and woof of the dialogue is the trochaic line of seven or eight syllables, in which Nov. 19, and Nov. 26, 1853. IV.] CALDERON IN ENGLAND. 113 the Spanish romances are written, and which may be called pre-eminently the national metre. This is constructed on a scheme altogether strange to our ears. One rhyme will run through the whole of a Spanish romance, or through some hundred lines of a Spanish play, recurring in every alternate line. But then this rhyme is not a full one, like ours, where consonants and vowels must rhyme alike; but so long as the vowels rhyme, the consonants are free. Thus the assonants, as in Spanish they are called, to distinguish them from full or consonant rhymes, such as crwzan, jwntas, wna, would be considered to rhyme with one another for the sake of the vowels u a recurring in each word. It is as though we should allow ' raiment,' ' angel,' ' greater,' to rhyme on the ground of the recur- ring a e ; or ' fire,' ' mine,' ' right,' (for the rhymes are not always double,) for the sake of the long i in each.* For one who is deeply convinced of the inti- mate coherence between a poem's form and its spirit, and that one cannot be altered without at the same time most seriously affecting the other, * See a good account of the Spanish assonants and their origin in Lord Holland's Lope de Vega, vol. ?.. pp. 215 222. I JI4 CALDERON IN ENGLAND. [CH. the metrical form of a great poem being not the garment which it wears, and which as a garment may be exchanged for another of a somewhat different pattern, but the flesh and blood which the inner soul of it has woven for itself, and which is a part of its own life for ever, for him there is no choice left in translating Calderon, but to endeavour to render the Spanish trochaic assonants into English lines of exactly the same construction. No English translator has hitherto attempted this. Yet seeming as it does to me one of the necessary conditions of a successful fulfilling of the task which he undertakes, I have not shrunk from the attempt. The thing itself is indeed not very difficult; at least it presents no difficulties which a fair amount of patience and labour, with a reasonable command over the resources of the language, will hot overcome. But unfortunately when the task is accomplished, at least with any such skill as I could command, the assonant, however it may sound in the Spanish, makes in English no satisfying music or melody to the ear. No doubt the verses are better for this ghost and shadow of a rhyme than they would have been without it; and in the long run and in the total impression which a passage leaves behind IV.] CALDERON IN ENGLAND. 115 it, the assonant certainly makes itself felt. Still there is a poverty about the English vowel rhyme to the English ear ; which has not been trained to watch for it, and which for a long while fails to detect it. Add to this that so many English vowels being shut, while Spanish are mostly open, there is much less to mark the rhyme in English than in Spanish; not to say further that in every case of the double or femi- nine rhyme, the second vowel in English must be e, that is, the vowel with the slightest sound of all ; words in a a, as agate and palace, or o o, as concord and foremost, or in any other combi- nation but a e, e e, i e, o e, or u e, being too unfrequent to allow of those assonants being chosen. Still it must be done in this metre or not at all; and because it is so difficult to do it in this so as sufficiently to gratify the ear, therefore, I believe, the attempt to render any Spanish drama in English can never be more than partially successful.* * Schlegel, Gries, and Malsburg, Schack, Eichendorff, and all who have attempted to transfer the southern poets into the language of Germany, have invariably employed the assonant where they have found it in the originals. It is not quite so strange with them as with us, seeing that, although quite a modern invention, it has been occasionally I 2 Il6 CALDERON IN ENGLAND. [CH. Many translators, however, have not seen this necessity as I have seen it, and forsaking wholly or in part the metres of the original, have cast their translations into other metrical forms ; it may be into our usual dramatic blank verse, or it may be into some form which shall be a compromise between this and that which they have not ven- tured to follow. They have thus bound themselves as I cannot but consider it, to a certain failure, abandoning the only principle of all true trans- lation, which demands adherence to the form as well as to the essence of the original. They have generally fallen back on blank verse. But what could be more unlike one another than the slow and somewhat stately movement of our long dramatic iambic, and the quick lyric flow of the Spanish assonants, short trochaics of seven or eight syllables in length? while the portions of Calderon's plays written in full consonant used by German poets in compositions of their own, as by Frederic ScbJegel in his Alarms, and by Tieck in his Octavian. Yet there also it has found earnest resistance ; the same charges have been brought against it to which it is evidently exposed with us; and it is very doubtful whether it has really established itself, whether it is there more than an exotic ; not adopted, but only tolerated as a matter of necessity, in the rendering of Spanish or Portuguese poetry. IV.] CALDERON IN ENGLAND. Il'J rhymes, and they are very considerable, appear still less like themselves when stripped of their rich recurrence of similar sounds, their often curiously interlaced rhymes; when clothed throughout in this same uniform dress, with all the rhythmical distinctions between one part and another obliterated wholly. Shelley feltso strongly the fatal consequences of rendering those parts of his original which are thus steeped in the music of their rhymes into our blank verse, his poetic sense so far revolted against it, that, however he may have rendered the assonants in this, those parts at least he clothes in rhyme, irregular indeed, while the utmost regularity reigns in the original, but yet of a rare grace and beauty. For the most part, however, those who employ the blank verse employ it through- out; it passes like a heavy roller over all, level- ling all, and often crushing all. It is almost im- possible to conceive any greater transformation than that which Calderon thus undergoes, even where a translation fulfils in other respects all the conditions of such. Other translators feeling this, have sought to evade the difficulty in another way. They have dealt with the full rhymed portions of the origi- nal as Shelley has done; this was obvious; but Il8 CALDERON IN ENGLAND. [CH. in respect of the Spanish assonants they have taken a middle course; not rendering them into our blank verse, nor yet into English assonants ; rather by a compromise they have thrown them into lines of equivalent length and accent, at the same time without attempting to reproduce the assonant or vowel rhyme. 1 cannot consider the scheme otherwise than as wholly unsuccessful. Slight and faintly distinguished by the English ear as the assonant is, it is yet that which alone gives form and frame to these verses ; and the short blank trochaics, deprived of this, can scarcely be said to be held in by any of those bonds and restraints which are the essence of verse, and in fact have neither the merits of verse nor of prose. I see here not the entire, but quite a sufficient, explanation of the little popularity which Cal- deron has ever obtained in England, of the little which he is ever likely to obtain. The trans- lator is in a manner shut in to failure ; and this, even supposing him to be in other respects suffi- ciently equipped for the task which he has un- dertaken. Of course it will have happened with these translators, as with any other body of verse- writers, that some will have mistaken their powers, and will have manifestly been inade- IV.] CALDERON IN ENGLAND, lip quately furnished with the technical skill which their task demanded; and their deficiency here has been itself quite enough to account for their ill-success, without seeking the causes of it further. Yet this by no means has been the case with all. Many have displayed abundant grace and poetry and feeling, with mastery of their own language and of that from which they were translating, even where they have not taken, as it seems to me, the best course in respect of the difficulties before them. Thus many years ago there was a series of well written analyses of plays of Calderon, with large passages translated, in Blackwood? s Magazine. Others are scattered up and down in our periodical litera- ture ; thus a solid and scholarly, though not very poetical, translation of Life 8 a Dream appeared in The Monthly Magazine, 1842, Nos. 549 551, and an analysis more recently in Frasers Ma- gazine, Aug. 1849, of The Three greatest Pro- digies. Probably the noble but unfinished fragments of The Wonder-working Magician, first pub- lished by Mrs. Shelley in the Posthumous Poems of her husband, which show that he did yield himself to the charm of these dramas, are that by which Calderon is known the best to the I2O CALDERON IN ENGLAND. [cH. English reader.* They are however too few and too fragmentary to afford more than a glimpse of that poet about whom Shelley spoke with so passionate an enthusiasm ; and probably, had they received the last touch of his hand, they would not have appeared altogether in their present shape. It may be permitted also to doubt whether Shelley was a very accurate Spanish scholar. Justina, by J. H., 1848,13 another . rendering of the same play. The writer appears unaware of Shelley's previous version of some of its scenes, and did not possess that command of the resources of the English language, which none more than Calderon requires. Six Dramas of Calderon freely translated, by Edward Fitzge- rald, 1853, are far the most important and worthiest contribution to the knowledge of the Spanish poet which we have yet received. But, written as they are in English of an exquisite purity and vigour, and dealing with poetry in a * That we have here a poet translating a poet is plain : witness these lines describing a wreck : " As in contempt of the elemental rage A man comes forth in safety, while the ship's Great form is in a watery eclipse Obliterated from the ocean's page, And round its wreck the huge sea-monsters sit, A horrid conclave, and the whistling wave Is heaped over its carcase, like a grave. " IV.] CALDERON IN ENGLAND. 121 poet's spirit, they yet suffer, as it seems to me, tinder serious drawbacks. Mr. Fitzgerald has chosen, and avows that he has chosen, plays which, with the exception of the noble Mayor of Zcdamea, can hardly be said to rank among Calderon's greatest, being rather effective melo- dramas than works of highest art. He does this with the observation, " Such plays as the Ma- gico Prodigioso and the Vida es Sueno require another translator and, I think, form of transla- tion." In respect of "form of translation " I am compelled to agree with him, his version being for the most part in English blank verse; but how little likely Calderon is to obtain a more gifted translator, and how much his modest choice of plays on which to exercise his skill, which are not among his author's best, is to be regretted, I think the reader will own. after a single quo- tation from this volume : " He who far off beholds another dancing, Even one who dances best, and all the time Hears not the music that he dances to, Thinks him a madman, apprehending not The law which moves his else eccentric action. So he that's in himself insensible Of love's sweet influence, misjudges him "Who moves according to love's melody : 122 CALDERON IN ENGLAND. [CH. IV. And knowing not that all these sighs and tears, Ejaculations and impatiences Are necessary changes of a measure Which the divine musician plays, may call The lover crazy, which he would not do, Did he within his own heart hear the tune Played by the great musician of the world." p. 15. There followed this in the same year another selection under the title, Dramas of Calderon translated from the Spanish, by Denis Florence M'Carthy. The preface contains some very ser- viceable literary notices in respect of what has been already done for Calderon in England. The trans- lations themselves are sometimes meritorious, yet I cannot consider them generally successful. In regard of the metrical scheme on which they rest, they furnish an example of that compro- mise between the demands of the original metre, and the convenience of the translator with which just now I found fault. The short trochaic is for the most part preserved, but stripped of its assonants. Thus far a critic of other men's attempts, I must now in turn expose to criticism my own. TRANSLATIONS FROM CALDERON. I. LIFE'S A DKEAM. ~J~ IFE'S a Dream was first published in the year 1635. In that year the brother of the poet published, of course with his sanction, a volume containing nine of his dramas, being the earliest authorized edition of any of his works ; and this occupies the foremost place among them. If we suppose it to have been written not very long before, and it is certainly not one of his youthful attempts, it will then pertain to that period of his life when his imagi- native and creative faculties were at the highest ; his deepest devotional feelings belong to a later period ; it will also represent his diction at its best. The inner meaning of this drama, and that which, elevating it above a mere tale of adven- tures, gives to it a higher significance, will hardly escape the thoughtful reader. Indeed the very name which it bears will put at once " the key 126 TRANSLATIONS FROM CALDERON. of knowledge " into his hands. The solemn sense of the nothingness of this life, as contrasted with the awful reality of eternity, has often found its utterance under the image which this name at once suggests. That this life is only a dream, and eternity the waking, this has been often the theme of the earnest religious teacher ; and many noble passages from Christian, and not Christian only, but heathen moralists, are the utterance of this truest thought. In this play of Calderon's we have the same thought finding its embodiment in the free region of art; its moral, although that is not forced upon the reader, being that this present life of ours, how- ever it may be only such a dream, is yet one which it lies in our power to dream well or ill, and that, as our choice is for the one or for the other, even so will our awaking be : " Sogno della mia vita e il corso intero ; Deh tu, Signer, quando a destarmi arrive, Fa, ch'io trovi riposo in sen del Vero." This truth, which in art has been often brought out on its comic, has been much seldomer on its more earnest side. The framework in which Shakespeare has set his Taming of the Shrew is, as is familiar to all, such a comic transfer of a drunken tinker in his sleep to a nobleman's LIFES A DREAM. 127 palace ; with doubtless the intention, which the poet has omitted to carry out, of bearing him back again to his rags and his alehouse so soon as the sport was exhausted, and suffering him to believe that all which he had seen and lived was only a dream ; the play itself being subordi- nated to this scheme, and properly only an inter- lude acted before him. There is a still earlier drama printed in the Six Old Plays dealing with the same subject ; one also, as I have under- stood, Jeppe paa Bierge, by Holberg, the chief dramatic poet of Denmark. This drama of Calderon's, which deals with the more serious and solemn aspect of the same subject, has been a great favourite in Germany since the re-awakened interest in Calderon. It has been acted with remarkable success ; and three or four times translated into German. I am only acquainted with one of these translations,* that of Gries, which appears to me admirably done. As regards any English forerunners in my task, I have already alluded to a solid and vigorous translation of this play into English blank verse, * I do not count among these Das Leben als ein Traum, von D. F. H. \V. M., Strassburg, 1750 ; the author of which does not seem to be aware that the play was originally Spanish. He has translated from an Italian translation, 128 TRANSLATIONS FROM CALDERON. which appeared in The Monthly Magazine, Nos. 549, 551, 1842, by John Oxenford ; its metrical form however would not allow it to attain any great success. Some passages also from Life's a Dream appeared in a small anonymous volume published in Edinburgh 1830, but by one evi- dently little accustomed to overcome the tech- nical difficulties of verse. I know not whether any other attempts have been made to introduce it to the English reader ; save indeed that Mr. Hallam* has given a rapid account of the play ; extending a certain toleration to it, and even bestowing upon it a qualified measure of approval. The scene opens in a wild and savage region of Poland. Rosaura, in man's attire, appears descending from the heights above. She is fol- lowing to the court of Poland Astolfo, Duke of and the work, considering the double alembic which, it has passed through, is not ill done ; nor yet Das menschliche Leben ist Traum, von M. T. F. Scharfenstein, 1760 ; which also is an imitation at second hand. Neither is a play in Dutch, Sigismundws f 'rinse van Polen, of Het Leeven is een Droom, Amsterdam, 1705, a translation, though certainly founded upon Calderon. The same may be said of Sigismond, due de Varsau, by Gillet de la Tissonerie, Paris, 1646. Boissy's La vie est tin Songe, Paris, 1732, I know only by name. Damas Hinard has a faithful prose translation, in his Chefs-d?ceuvre du Tfiedtre Espagnol, t. T. pp. 318 374. * Hist, of Literatv/re, vol. 3. pp. 534 537. LIFES A DREAM. 1 29 Muscovy ; \Vho, being engaged to her, and she only too far to him, is now seeking to wed Estrella his cousin, the niece, as he is the nephew, of Basilius, king of Poland. The king has no direct heir, and their .rival claims being in this way reconciled, they will together succeed to his throne. She has lost her way in the mountain ; her horse has broken from her, and she with her servant Clarin, the gracioso of the play, are wandering at random, when they are attracted by a light glimmering in a cavern ; drawing closer they hear voices of lamentation with the clank of chains. Having advanced too far to retreat, they are compelled to overhear one who mourns over a captivity which has reached back to the hour of his birth. But to begin where Rosaura first catches a glimpse of the light Mr. Hal lam himself observes of these opening scenes that " they are impressive and full of beauty, even now that we are become accustomed in excess to these theatrical wonders." Ros. Did ever any such adventures meet ! Yet if mine eyesight suffers no deceit, "Which fancy plays on me, By that faint glimmer day retains I see, As I must needs believe, A dwelling place. 130 TRANSLATIONS FROM CALDERON. Clar. Me too my hopes deceive, Or I discern the same. Ros. Amid these naked rocks the rugged frame Peers of a lowly shed, Timidly rearing towards the sun its head. In such a rustic style Shows the rude masonry of this wild pile, That, at the bottom set Of these tall mountainous summits which have met The sun's great orb of light, It seems a loosened crag, rolled from the upper height. Clar. Let us approach it then ; For long enough we have gazed upon it, when 'Twere better we should try If the good folk within would generously Admit us. Ros. Lo ! the door, (Funereal jaws were name to suit it more) Yawns, and the night forlorn Thence issues, as in that deep centre born. \_A clank of chains is heard. Clar. Hark ! what is that I hear ? Ros. I am rooted to the spot, congealed with fear. Clar. Is't not the clank of chains P LIFES A DREAM. 13! Sure, we have here a galley-slave in pains ! Well did my fears say so. [Sigiamund is discovered within, clothed in skins. Siff. (within). Ah miserable me ! ah, woe, woe, woe ! Jios. List, what a doleful cry ! Clarin. Clar. What would you, Lady ? Ros. Let us fly The terrors strange of this enchanted tower. Clar. Nay, when it comes to this, I want the power. Eos. Say, is not that a taper, That feeble star, that weak and tremulous vapor, Which with its pale rays crowned, And shedding ineffectual ardors round, Makes with a dubious light Yet darker this dark dwelling place of night ? Yes ; for by that faint gleam I can distinguish dimly what would seem A prison-house obscure, Which of a living corpse is sepulture : And. to enhance my fear, In skins of beasts a man doth there appear, With fetters fastly tied, And only by that light accompanied. Since flight would not avail, Let us from this listen to his sad tale, And all his story know. E 2 133 TRANSLATIONS FROM CALDERON. Siff. Ah miserable me, ah woe, woe, woe! Heavens, why make ye me to mourn, More than all men else forlorn ? If my birth has been my sin, Yet what sinned I more herein Than others, who were also born ? Born the bird was, yet with gay Gala vesture, beauty's dower, Scarce it is a wingdd flower, Or a richly-plumaged spray, Ere the aerial halls of day It divideth rapidly, And no more will debtor be To the nest it hastes to quit, But with more of soul than it, I am grudged its liberty. And the beast was born, whose skin Scarce those beauteous spots and bars, Like to constellated stars, Doth from its great Painter win, Ere the instinct doth begin Of its fierceness and its pride, And its lair on every side It has measured far and nigh, While with better instinct I Am its liberty denied. Born the mute fish was also, LIFES A DREAM. 133 Child of ooze and ocean weed ; Scarce a finny bark of speed To the surface brought, and lo! In vast circuits to and fro Measures it on every side All the waste of ocean wide, Its illimitable home ; While with greater will to roam I that freedom am denied. Born the streamlet was, a snake, Which unwinds the flowers among, Silver serpent, that not long May to them sweet music make, Ere it quits the flow'ry brake, Onward hastening to the sea With majestic course and free, Which the open plains supply ; While with more life gifted, I Am denied its liberty.* Those acquainted with the construction of Cal- * Calderon is so fond of introducing into his dramas persons who have been brought up in absolute solitude, and then are suddenly cast upon the world, and of dealing with the effects which are thus produced upon them, that it is not to be wondered at, that several passages nearly re- sembling this, variations in fact upon it, are to be found in his other dramas one for example, and a very beau- tiful one, in the first act of Echo and Narcissus. 134 TRANSLATIONS FROM CALDERON. deron's dramas will observe that lie is here true to his ordinary plan of beginning with a scene which shall rouse curiosity; and only when he may have thus hoped to have secured the spectators' attention, does he proceed to the orderly unfolding of his plot. An involuntary ex- clamation of Rosaura's makes the captive aware of the two that are so close to him. His first impulse, when he discovers that he has been overheard in the hour of his weakness, is to de- stroy the listeners, however unintentional and unavoidable their listening may have been. Rosaura casts herself at his feet, and obtains his grace. But this is hardly so, when they are interrupted by the entrance of Clotaldo, the most trusted servant of the Polish king, and the only person acquainted with the secret of this prisoner's condition, or with the causes of his life-long captivity. Clotaldo summons the guards of the tower, and the intruders are borne away, despite of Sigismund's furious re- monstrance and the passionate outbreaks of his rage. They have incurred the penalty of death, pronounced against any who should approach the place where this prisoner was confined. We have in the next scene the court of the king of Poland. The aged monarch, in solemn assembly of the chief estates of the realm, declares LIFE'S A DREAM. 135 to Astolfo and to Estrella the conditions under which, the inheritance of the kingdom may de- volve on them. He narrates at length his addiction in former years to the science of astrology ; and how he had dived deeply into the mysteries of the future. Though counted childless, he too had once a son ; but reading at his birth his horoscope, he learned that this son should be fierce and ungovernable and cruel, and that he should himself one day lie prostrate at his feet. This son, whom he has feared to ac- knowledge, still lives brought up in a remote tower, with only Clotaldo conscious of the secret. But now the father is touched with remorse, and repents of the cruelty with which he has sought to defeat the possible violence of his son. He will bring him forth, and make proof of his dis- position. These prophecies of the stars do but announce the inclination ; they cannot impair the free will. Sigismund, for of course he and the captive of the first scene are the same, may overcome all the malignant influences of his stars; for men are not servile to their circum- stances or their instincts, but it is their higher task to mould and fashion and conquer these. If he bear himself well in this trial, he shall be acknowledged as the heir ; if otherwise, he shall be sent back to his dungeon, and Astolfo and 136 TRANSLATIONS FKOM CALDERON. Estrella shall inherit the kingdom. As now the secret is a secret no longer, and no motive for further concealment exists, the prisoners are easily pardoned ; and Rosaura, who has resumed female attire, is taken into the train of Estrella. There is an underplot by which the latter be- comes acquainted with Astolfo's previous en- gagement to Rosaura, which, graceful as it is, I yet shall not touch, as my purpose is only with the more earnest side of this drama. It has its bearing on the ultimate issue, as in consequence of the discovery, Estrella breaks off her engagement with the duke. ACT II. In the first scene of this act Clotaldo de- clares to the king the manner in which he has carried out his purpose. In mercy to the young prince it has been determined by his father that he shall be brought to the palace while under the influence of a sleeping potion ; so that, should he prove unworthy, being borne back to his dungeon under the power of ano- ther, he may be persuaded that all the pomp and glory with which he was surrounded for a brief moment was indeed only a dream which he dreamed. There is something fine in Clotaldo's LIFE'S A DREAM. 137 account of the manner in which he carried out this part of his monarch's plans. The passage is in assonants in the original, and therefore in the translation. The assonants employed are e e, the weakest unfortunately of all our vowels ; but the nearest possible approach which the language allows to the e a of the original. Clo. All, as thou commanded'st it, Has been happily effected. King. Say, Clotaldo, how it passed. Clo. In this manner it succeeded. "With that mildly soothing draught, Which thou badest should be tempered "With confections, mingling there Of some herbs the influences, Whose tyrannic strength and power, And whose force that works in secret, So the reason and discourse Alienateth and suspendeth, That it leaves the man who quaffs it Than a human corpse no better, And in deep sleep casting him Hobs him of his powers and senses With that potion in effect, Where all opiates met together In one draught, to Sigismund'a Narrow dungeon I descended. 138 TRANSLATIONS FROM CALDERON. There I spoke with him awhile Of the human arts and letters, Which the still and silent aspect Of the mountains and the heavens Him have taught that school divine, Where he has been long a learner, And the voices of the birds And the beasts has apprehended. Then, that I might better raise And exalt his spirit's temper To the enterprize you aim at, For my theme I took the fleetness Of a soaring eagle proud, Which, an overbold contemner Of the lower paths of air, To the sphere of fire ascended, And like winged lightning there Showed, or comet fiery-tresse'd. Then I hailed its lofty flight, Saying, " Thou in truth art empress Of the birds, 'tis therefore just That thou be o'er all preferred." But there was no need of more, For if one of empire speaketh But a word, with high-raised pride Straightway he discourses ever ; For in truth his blood excites him, LIFES A DREAM. 139 That he fain would be the attempter Of great things and he exclaimed, " In yon free and open heaven Are there any then so base That to serve they have consented ? This when I consider, then My misfortunes solace yield me : For at least if I am subject, Such I am by force, not freely, Since I never to another Of freewill myself would render." When I saw him maddened thus "With these thoughts, the theme for ever Of his griefs, I pledged him then With the drugged cup ; from the vessel Scarcely did the potion pass To his bosom, ere he rendered All his senses up to sleep Thro' his veins and all his members Running such an icy sweat, That had I not known the secret Of his feigned death, for his life I in verity had trembled. In this lethargy he has been borne to the palace, like those whom Marco Polo tells of, that in a like condition were carried into the gardens of the Old Man of the Mountain ; he has 140 TRANSLATIONS FROM CALDERON. been placed amid all the splendour and magni- ficence of his father's royal apartments ; and now they are only waiting the moment of his awaking. There are tokens that this has arrived, and that he is approaching: the king and Clotaldo retire. Hardly have they done so, before Sigismund enters : servants are ministering to him, and he is full of wonder and admiration at the inexplicable change which has come over him; but, as will be seen pre- sently, justifying all the previsions in respect of him ; as indeed the king his father had taken effectual means that they should be fulfilled. The scene, which is a long one, is yet full of dramatic spirit and vigour, and I will give its chiefest part. Siff. Help me, heaven, what do I see ? Help me, heaven, what things are here ? Filling me with little fear, But with much perplexity P I in sumptuous palaces, Costliest hangings round me spread, I with servants compassed, Gay and glittering as these ! On a couch so rich and rare I to waken suddenly, With this retinue to me IIFES A DREAM. 14! Offering royal robes to wear ! Dream to call it, were deceit, For myself awake I know ; I am Sigismund even so. Heavens, let no delusion cheat Me, but say what this may be, That has overcome me, while Sleep my senses did beguile : Is it truth or phantasy ? But what profit to debate, And this idle coil to keep H Best the present joy to reap, And the future leave to fate. ist Ser. What of sadness veils his brow ! 2nd Ser. "Who were not distraught, to whom Should arrive such change of doom?. Clar. I for one. 2nd Ser. Speak to him now. ist Ser. "VVouldst thou they should sing again ? Sig. No, their singing pleases not. 2nd Ser. As thou wert so wrapped in thought, We had hoped to ease thy pain. Sig. Not with melodies like these I my sadness can assuage ; Nothing did mine ear engage But those martial harmonies. Enter Clotaldo. 142 TRANSLATIONS FROM CALDERON. Clo. Let your Highness, mighty Lord, First give me your hand to kiss : I must not the honour miss First this homage to afford. Siff. 'Tis Clotaldo ! he who used In my tower to treat me so; Doth he now this homage show P I am utterly confused ! Clo. With the strange perplexity Growing from thy new estate, Unto many doubts and great Reason might exposed be ; But I gladly thee would spare, If I might, them all and so ' I would give thee, Sir, to know Thou a prince art, Poland's heir. And if until now thy state Has been hidden and retired, 'Twas that it was thus required By the menaces of fate, Which pronounced a thousand woes To this empire, if in it Should the sovran laurel sit Crowning thy imperial brows. But relying on thine heed, That thou wilt the stars o'ercome, For not servile to his doom LIFE'S A DREAM. 143 Lives the valiant man indeed, Thee from that thy cell forlorn, While the might of deep sleep all Thy wrapt senses did enthral, They have to this palace borne. But thy sire, the king my lord, Will be here anon, and he What is more will tell to thee. Sig. But thou villain, wretch abhorred, If I do mine own self know, Know I not enough ? what more Need I to be told, my power And my pride of place to show ? How did'st thou to Poland dare Act such treason, in despite Of all reason and all right, To me never to declare What my birth was? woe is thee ! Thus thou did'st the state betray, Flatterer to thy monarch play, Cruel tyrant unto me. Thus for wrongs so strange and rare Thee the state, the king, and I Each and all condemn to die By my hands. 2nd Ser. ' . Sir Sig. Let none dare 144 TRANSLATIONS FROM CALDERON. Hindrance in my way to throw : "Tis in vain : by heaven, I say, If thou standest in my way, From the window shalt thou go 2nd Ser. Fly, Clotaldo. Clo. Woe is thee ! Sigismund, what pride thou showest, Nor that thou art dreaming knowest. \_Clotaldoflies. 2nd. Ser. He did but Sig. No words with me. 2nd Ser. With the king's commands comply. Sig. But in an unrighteous thing He should not obey the king ; And besides, his prince am I. Astolfo enters to pay his compliments in a set speech to the prince. Sigismund however cuts him short, and gives him so haughty and insult- ing a reception that after some few angry words he withdraws. Estrella enters on the same errand, whose hand he seizes, and to whom he pays such violent compliments, that the same servant who was so forward before, and who knows that Astolfo is looking on at a little dis- tance, interferes, and reminds Sigismund that it is not right so to behave to the affianced bride of another. LIFE'S A DREAM. 145 Sig. All this causes me disgust ; Nothing appears right to me, Being against my phantasy*. 2nd Ser. But alone in what is just By thyself I heard it said It was fitting to obey. Sig. And you also heard me say Who in me displeasure bred, From the balcony should go. 2nd Ser. But that feat with such an one As myself were scarcely done. Sig. That we very soon will know. [Seizes him, and they go out struggling ; the rest follow. Enter Astolfo. Ast. What do I to see arrive P Est. Haste, if you his life can save. Sig. (within) There, the sea may be his grave. [He re-enters. I could do it, as I live. Enter the King. King. What has been P Sig. Not any thing. A fellow that was vexing me I tumbled from that balcony. da. Be aware ; it is the king. L 146 TRANSLATIONS FROM CALDERON. King. From thy coming, O my son, Must a death so soon ensue ? Sig. But he said I could not do That which I have fairly done. King. Prince, it brings me sorrow great, When I hither did repair, Thinking to have found thee ware, Triumphing o'er stars and fate, There has been such savage pride Thus in thy demeanour seen, That thy foremost act has been A most grievous homicide. With what feeling can I now Hound thy neck mine arms entwine, Knowing the proud folds of tliine Have been taught so lately how To give death ? Who, drawing near, Sees a dagger on the ground Bare, that gave a mortal wound, And can keep from feeling fear ? Or who sees the bloody spot Where they slew another man, And to nature's instinct can Help replying, shuddering not ? I then, who in thine arms see Of this death the instrument, LIFES A DREAM. 147 And the spot see, blood-besprent, From thine arms am fain to flee, And although I purposed For thy neck a fond embrace, Will without it leave this place, Having of thine arms just dread. Sig. Well I can without it fare, As I have fared until now. For a father who to show Harshness such as this could bear, Me has like a wild beast bred, Driven me wholly from his side, And all nurture has denied, Would have gladly seen me dead, It import but little can That he will not now bestow His embrace, who robbed me so Of my being as a man. King, Oh that Heaven had thought it good I had ne'er given that to thee ! Then thy pride I should not see, Should not mourn thy savage mood. Sig. I should not of thee complain, Hadst thou never given me it, But that given, thou didst think fit To resume thy gift again : L 2 148 TRANSLATIONS FROM CALDERON. For though giving is well named Deed that honour high doth bring, Yet to give is meanest thing, When the gift again is claimed. King. These then are thy thanks to me, That of poor and wretched thrall Thou a prince art P Sig. What at all Owe I here of thanks to thee, O thou cruel tyrant hoar ? If thou old and doting art, Dying, what dost thou impart ? Aught that was not mine before ? Thou my father art and king ; Then doth nature's law to me All this pomp and majesty By its ordinances bring. Though I am then in this case, Owe I nothing to thine hand ; Rather might account demand For the freedom and due place Thou hast robbed me of till now. Therefore rather thank thou me, That I reckon not with thee, While my debtor provest thou. King. Arrogant and bold thou art ; To its word heaven sets its seal : LIFES A DREAM. 149 To the same heaven I appeal, Oh thou proud and swoln of heart. Though thyself thou now dost know, Counting no delusion near, Though thou dost in place appear Where as foremost thou dost show, Yet from me this counsel take That thou act a gentler part, For perchance thou dreaming art, Though thou seemest thus awake. {.Exit. Sig. That perhaps I dream, although I unto myself may seem Waking ; but I do not dream, What I was and am I know ; And howe'er thou may'st repent, Little help that yields thee now : Know I now myself, and thou With thy sorrow and lament Canst not this annul, that I Born am heir to Poland's crown. If before time I bowed down To my dungeon's misery, 'Twas that knowledge I had none Of my state ; but now I know This, and mine own self also, Man and beast combined in one. 150 TRANSLATIONS FROM CALDERON. Presently Rosaura enters in search, of her mis- tress, and finds herself unawares in Sigismund's presence. They recognize one another with a mutual perplexity ; he is taken with her beauty, and in this language expresses his admiration. I need hardly observe for the understanding the first compliment of the prince that estrella in Spanish is star. Siff. Fair woman, who art thou ? Ros. I must remain To him unknown ; Sir, in Estrella's train A most unhappy maid. S/ff. Not so the sun say rather, by whose aid That star continues bright, Since from thy rays it ever draws its light. I in the kingdom sweet, Where the fair squadrons of the garden meet, The goddess rose have seen Elected as the loveliest for their queen. And 'mid the jewels fine, The rich assemblage sparkling in the mine, The diamond ruled as lord, To whom, as brightest, empire all accord. And in heaven's brilliant court, Whither the senate of the stars resort, I saw that Hesper owned The chiefest station, royally enthroned. LIFE'S A DREAM. 151 And at the great sun's call When the bright planets are assembled all, He over all had sway, And reigned the lordliest oracle of day. Then how, if ever the most beauteous owns First place 'mid planets, flowers, and stars, and stones, Hast thou obeyed the less , Who art in thy transcendant loveliness, And shewing fairest far, At once sun, planet, diamond, rose and star ? In a little however Sigismund, leaving these high-flown compliments, detains her so rudely, that Clotaldo, who has anxiously followed her into the prince's presence, is obliged to come forward and interfere for her release. The prince, enraged at the interruption, flings him at his feet, and a second time attempts his life. Rosaura runs out, crying for help, and Astolfo, summoned by her cries, seeks to protect the old man, when Sigismund turns upon him, and Astolfo is obliged to draw also to protect his life. The king attracted by the tumult enters, and again expostulates with his son. He answers upbraiding with upbraiding. Why should he have respect to the grey hairs of \ 152 TRANSLATIONS FROM CALDERON. Clotaldo, when those of his father shall lie one day at his feet 1 With this defiance Sigismund goes out. It is now acknowledged by all that nothing can be done with him, but to replace him in his former dungeon once more. At the earliest opportunity, that is, when next he desires to drink, the second sleeping potion shall be given him. Yet here let me pause to observe that we should entirely miss the true point of view from which it was the poet's intention that we should regard his work, if all our sympathies were with the father, and against Sigismund. His resentment on account of his deprivation of all that humanizing culture which was his right as a man was neither unnatural nor unjust, little as he can be justified in his manner of displaying it. Feuerbach, not the atheist, but his father, and an eminent writer on criminal jurisprudence, has composed a memoir on Gaspar Hauser, whose actual history so much resembled that which Calderon has here imagined,* with this title, Kaspar Hauser, Beispiel eines Verbrechens am * That is, supposing the whole account which he gave of himself was not an imposture, and the wound of which he died inflicted by his own hand. Feuerbach however, a man little likely to be imposed on, was convinced of the truth of his story. LIFE'S A DREAM. 153 Seelenleben. Such an offence against the higher life had been here also committed, and it was only just that it should be avenged. We must conclude that what had been agreed on has been done ; for in the next scene Sigis- mund is again in his tower, clothed with skins and fastened with a chain as before. The scene is a noble one ; I can only hope that its beauty, especially that of its concluding soliloquy, has not wholly evaporated in the process of empty- ing from vessel to vessel. Clotaldo and sei'- O vants, among whom is Clarin, have brought him thither. Clo. Lay your burden on this floor, For to-day must end his pride, "Where it started Ser. I have tied His fetter as it was before. Clar. Never, never any more Waken, Sigismund, to see Thy reverse of destiny : Like a shadow with no stay, Like a flame that dies away, Vanishing thy majesty ! Clo. One who such moralities Makes, should never lack a place Where he may have ample space 1 54 TRANSLATIONS FROM CALDERON. And leisure to discourse at ease : This is he whom ye must seize, Let him here continue bound. Clar. But me wherefore ? Clo. When are found Secrets grave to clarion known, We guard it safe, lest they be blown, If the clarion once should sound. Clar. But me wherefore bind me thus ? jit my father's life did I Aim P or from that balcony Did I, fierce and tyrannous, Fling that little Icarus ? [They take him away. Enter the King disguised. King. ClotaldoP, Clo. Does your majesty Thus in this disguise appear ? King. Foolish yearnings draw me here, And a mournful wish to see How it fares (ah woe is me !) With my son. Clo. Behold him shorn. Of his glory, and forlorn, In his woful first estate. King. Prince, alas, unfortunate, Under stars malignant born LIFE'S A DREAM. 155 Rouse him from his lethargy, Now that all his strength has sunk With the opiate that he drunk. Clo. He is slumbering restlessly, And he speaks. King. What dreameth he ? Let us listen. Sig. [speaking in Ms sleepJ] What is this ? He a righteous ruler is, Who the tyrants doth chastise. By my hand Clotaldo dies, And my feet my sire shall kiss. Clo. With my death he threatens me. King. Me with outrage and with wrong. Clo. He means my life shall not be long. King. Me at his feet he means to see. Sig. Let my valour proud and free On the world's broad stage be found With a peerless glory crowned : That my vengeance full may be, O'er his sire let all men see Triumphing king Sigismund. [He wakens. But alas ! where am I, where ? King. Me he must not look upon : Thou wilt do what needs be done, While I yonder will repair. [The King retires. 156 TRANSLATIONS FROM CALDERON. Sig. Can it be then I that bear Prisoned here, this fetter's weight ? I in this forlorn estate ? Yea, and is not this dark room, Help me, heaven ! my former tomb ? I have dreamed strange things of late. Clo. I must now my station take, And my part allotted play. [Aside. It is time to wake, I say. Sig. Yea, time is it to awake. Clo, Wilt thou not this whole day break Thy deep slumber ? Is it so That since I that eagle's slow Flight pursued and path sublime, Leaving you, that all this time You have never wakened ? Sig. No, Nor yet now awake am I ; .For, Clotaldo, as it seems I am still involved in dreams ; Nor this deem I erringly, For if that I did espy Sure and certain, was a dream, That I now see doth but seem. ' Clo. What your dream was might I know ? Sig. I awoke from sleep, and lo ! LIFE'S A DREAM. 157 'Twas upon a gorgeous bed With bright colours pictured, (Oh the cruel flattery,) Bich as that flowered tapestry Which on earth the spring has spread. Many nobles in my sight Humbly bending, gave me name Of their prince, to serve me came With rich jewels, vestments bright, Till thou changed'st to delight That suspense which held me bound, Uttering the joyful sound, That though now I this way fare, ' I was Poland's rightful heir. do. Welcome good I must have found. Sig. None so good I drew my sword, Thee a traitor fiercely named, Twice to take thy life I aimed. Clo. How should I be so abhorred ? Siff. I was then of all the lord, And revenge on all I sought. Only a woman in me wrought Love, which was no dream I trowi For all else has ended now, This alone has ended not. {The King goes out. 158 TRANSLATIONS FROM CALDERON. Clo. He has moved the king to weep, Who has from his post retired. [Aside. Thou wert by our talk inspired Of that eagle ; thus thy sleep Did the same lordly current keep : Yet in dreams it were well done, Sigismund, to honour one Who has watched and loved thee so, Since good does not perish, though It be wrought in dream alone. [Exit. Sig. Truth and let us then restrain This the fierceness of our pride, Lay this wilfulness aside, Lest perchance we dream again : And we. shall so, who remain In a world of wonder thrown, Where to live and dream are one. For experience tells me this, Each is dreaming what he is, Till the time his dream is done. The king dreams himself a king, And in this conceit he lives, Lords it, high commandment gives, Till his lent applause takes wing, Death on light winds scattering, Or converting (oh sad fate !) LIFE'S A DREAM. 159 Into ashes all his state : How can men so lust to reign, When to waken them again From their false dream death doth wait ? And the rich man dreams no less 'Mid his wealth which brings more cares, And the poor man dreams he bears All his want and wretchedness ; Dreams, whom anxious thoughts oppress, Dreams, who for high place contends, Dreams, who injures and offends ; And though none are rightly ware, All are dreaming that they are In this life, until death ends. I am dreaming I lie here, Laden with this fetter's weight, And I dreamed that I of late Did in fairer sort appear. "What is life ? a frenzy mere ; What is life ? e'en that we deem ; A conceit, a shadow all, And the greatest good is small, Nothing is, but all doth seem, Dreams within dreams, still we dream. The Scene closes. l6o TRANSLATIONS FKOM CALDERON. ACT III. We have reached the third and concluding act. Sooner, perhaps, than Sigismund expected, he is to dream again. A great part of the army and the people, learning that there is a rightful heir to the throne, rise in insurrection against an arrangement which should give the crown to any other. They care nothing for the prophecy of the stars ; and, finding their way to the place of Sigismund's confinement, burst into his dungeon, and demand that he should place himself at their head, and conquer for himself a throne. His perplexity at this new dream which he is summoned to dream is finely drawn but Clotaldo's word of warning, that he have respect to the awakening, and the discipline which he has undergone, have not been wholly thrown away. To their loud and tumultuous homage, Long live Sigismund our king, he answers Must I dream again of glories (Is your pleasure so, high heavens,) Oh how soon to be dissolved ? Will you that again encompassed With those phantom shapes to mock me, LIFE'S A DREAM. 161 I behold my kingly state Of the wind dispersed and broken ? Must I my sad lesson learn Once again ? again discover To what perils mortal power Lives its whole life long exposed ? No, it shall not, shall not be : To my destiny behold me Subject now ; and having learned That this life a dream is wholly, Hence I say, vain shapes, pretending To possess a voice and body, Cheating my dull sense, and having In good truth nor one nor other. I desire not borrowed greatness,* * These twelve lines which follow are so graceful in the original that I must needs add them in a note. Que no quiero magestades Fingidas, pompas no quiero Fantasticas, illusiones, Que al soplo menos ligero Del aura han de deshacerse, Bien como el florido almendro, Que por madrugar sus flores Sin aviso y sin consejo, Al primer soplo se apagan, Marchitando y desluciendo De sus rosados capillos Belleza, luz y ornamento. X 1 62 TRANSLATIONS FROM CALDERON. Nor imaginary glories, Pomps fantastical, illusions, With the faintest breath that bloweth Of the light wind perishing : As the buds and bloom disclosed By the flow 'ring almond tree, With such timeless haste unfolded, That the first breath dims their brightness, Tarnishing and staining wholly All the light and loveliness Which its roseate tresses boasted. Now I know, I know ye now, And I know there falls no other Lot to every one that dreams ; Cheats avail with me no longer ; Undeceived now know I surely That our life a dream is only. Sold. If thou thinkest we deceive thee, Turn thine eyes that way, to yonder Proud acclivity, and see Multitudes that wait to offer Homage unto thee. Siff. Already I the same things have beholden Just as clearly and distinctly As at this time I behold them, Yet was it a dream. LIFE'S A DREAM. 163 Sold. Sir, ever Great events have sent before them Their announcements : dreamt you this, It was surely such an omen. Siff. Tis well said ; such omen was it. Yet since life so quickly closes, Let us, even though this as false is, Dream once more this not forgotten, That we must at fittest hour Wake again, this brief joy over; For that known, the undeception Will not prove so sad nor costly. Then, premising only this, That this power, if true, belongeth Not to us, but merely lent is, To return unto its Owner, Let us venture upon all. Vassals, my best thanks acknowledge Your true fealty. Lo ! in me One whose valour and whose boldness From a foreign yoke shall free you. Sound to arms, and in brief moment Ye my courage high shall witness ; I against my father boldly Wage this battle, and the word Will make true, which heaven has spoken, M 2 164 TRANSLATIONS FROM CALDERON. At my feet beholding him. But lest this my dream be over, That not done, best hold my peace, Lest I prove an empty boaster. All. Long live Sigismund, our king. Enter Clotaldo. Clo. Ha ! what noise ? my life is forfeit. Siff. You, Clotaldo P Clo. Sire ? on me "Will his whole wrath fall. Clar. I wonder If he'll fling him down the rocks. Clo. At your royal feet behold me, That it is to die I know. Siff. Eise, my father kneel no longer, Eise to be the guide and pole-star By the which I shape my projects ; For by your great loyalty Was my helpless childhood fostered. Give me your embrace. Clo. What say you ? Siff. That I dream, and would act nobly, Since well doing is not lost Though it be in dreams done only. Clo. Then, sir, if it be your blazon To do well, that I with boldness LIFE'S A DREAM. 165 Crave of you the same permission, Cannot for a fault be noted. Arms you wield against your sire, I can neither counsel offer, Nor lend aid against my king. See me prostrated before thee. Kill me, if thou wilt. Sig. Ha, villain ! Ingrate ! but 'tis need I govern And in meekness rule my soul, For his true estate who knoweth ? To your loyalty, Clotaldo, Owe I envy, praise and wonder ; Go and serve your lord and king, We shall meet in battle shortly. But for you, now sound to arms. Clot. My best thanks this grace acknowledge. {Exit. Sig. Destiny, we go to reign ; "Wake I, let not sleep come o'er me ; Sleep I, do not waken me. But well doing most imports me, Be it thus or thus if truth, For the truth's sake; if the other, To win friends against the time When this fleeting dream is over. \They go out, sounding alarums. 1 66 TRANSLATIONS FKOM CALDERON. Presently comes another struggle with tempt- ation. Sigismund is advancing against the capital of his father, and Rosaura, at his ap- proach, flees to him as her champion, who shall compel her faithless lover to do her right. Along with the temptation there goes also a new and deeper confusion, for she was one of the persons of his former dream. He discourses thus : Help me, heaven, that I may learn From these doubts to issue wholly, Or not muse on them at all. Who has known such doubtful torments ? If I dreamt that majesty Whereof lately I was owner, How doth now this woman give me Of that time such certain tokens P Then it was a truth, no dream ; But if truth, which is another And no less perplexity, How do my life's following courses Name it dream ? then so resembling Unto dreams are this world's glories, It will happen many times That the true for false are holden, And the false accounted true LIFE'S A DREAM. 167 These so little from those other Differing, that 'tis hard to know If what felt is and beholden Be a falsehood, be a truth : To the original the copy So resembles, that a question Which the true is rises often. Then if this be thus, and all Of our majesty and glory, Of our pomp and pride and greatness, Must in shadows vanish wholly, Let us hasten to improve What is ours, this present moment. Let us snatch a present joy, While a dream no future knoweth. In my power Rosaura is, And my soul her charms adoreth. : Let me seize then this occasion Which unto my feet has borne her. This a dream is ; then delights Let us dream of for the moment, Pain will track them swiftly after. But I do confute mine own self With the reasons I advance. If a dream, an empty glory. Who for empty glory here 1 68 TRANSLATIONS FROM CALDEROX. Would an heavenly glory forfeit ? What past good is not a dream P Who has tasted blisses lofty, And gays not, whenever these are In his memory revolved, Doubtless I have dreamed it all, Which I saw : but if my knowledge Tells me this, and if desire Is a flame that brightly gloweth, Yet is turned to dead cold ashes By the wind that breathes the softest, Let us then the eternal aim at, Fame that no decreases offers, Blisses that not ever slumber, Majesty that ne'er reposes. He breaks off the dangerous interview, and bids sound to arms. Presently the armies join battle, and the old king is overthrown, and his routed army scattered in confused flight. The poor gracioso, Clarin, has now a tragic part assigned to him, and one very characteristic of Calderon's skill in making all parts of his drama work together for one effect. He con- ceals himself among the rocks, in a place, as he boasts, of such entire security, that no danger can possibly find him out. The king presently LIFE'S A DREAM. 169 appears, with Astolfo and others, also flying; shots are fired from behind, and the poor clown drops from his place of concealment, mortally wounded, at the king's feet. To the question, Who is he 1 ? he has strength to reply that he is one who, seeking to avoid death, has found it; who has fulfilled in himself that destiny which he thought most certainly to defeat, and this by the very means which he took to defeat it. The lesson is not thrown away upon the king. The pursuers are upon him and his company; they enter, Sigismund and his troops. After a momentary attempt at concealment, the king comes forth from his hiding-place, throws him- self at his son's feet, and the menace of the stars is accomplished here also, by the very means employed to defeat it. Let us see how Calderon manages this concluding scene : Sold. In this intricate wilderness, Somewhere in its thickest tangles The king hides himself. Siff. Pursue him, Till not one bush has remained Which you have not throughly searched, All its trunks and all its branches. Clo. Fly, Sir. 1 70 TRANSLATIONS FROM CALDERON. King. Wherefore should I fly ? Ast. Sire, what mean you? King. Prince, unhand me. Clo. What, Sir, would you ? King. Use, Clotaldo, That sole help which yet avails me. Prince, if thou art seeking me, At thy feet behold me fallen. Let the snow of these white hairs Serve unto thee as a carpet ; Set thy foot upon my neck, On my crown, my glory trample. Serve thyself of me thy captive, And all cares and cautions baffled, Let the stars fulfil their threat'nings, Heaven accomplish what is fated. Sig. Princes, nobles, Court of Poland, Who of these unequalled marvels Are the witnesses, your prince Speaks unto you therefore hearken. That which is of heaven determined, That which on its azure tablets God has with his finger written,! Who those broad and skiey pages, Pranked with all their golden cyphers, Makes his solemn scroll and parchment, LIFE'S A DREAM. 171 That doth never falsely play : It is he alone plays falsely, Who injuriously to use them, Their hid mysteries unravels. Thus my father, who is here, That he might escape the madness Of my nature, did for this In man's shape a wild beast make me, In such fashion that when I, By the gentle blood that races In my veins, my noble state, By such nurture as became me, Might, of good hope, have approved me Mild and docile ; yet that manner Of my wild and savage rearing Was alone sufficient amply To have brutalized my soul. Oh fair way to shun the danger ! "Were it to a man fore-uttered, Some inhuman beast will slay thee, Would he choose, such prophecy That he might defeat, to waken Beasts that he perchance found sleeping. Were it said, the sword thou bearest Sheathed, shall prove the very one Which shall be thy death, oh vainest 172 TRANSLATIONS FROM CALDERON. Method to annul the threat, From that hour to bear it naked, With its point against his bosom. Were it said, the gulfs of water, Building silver tombs above thee, For thy sepulchre are fated, 'Twere ill done to brave the wild waves, When the indignant sea in anger Lifted hills of snowy foam, Mountainous heights of crystal raisM. With my sire the same thing fortuned, As with one who should awaken The wild beast that threatened him ; As with one who bared the dagger He most feared, or to sea-tomb Doomed, the stormiest oceans challenged. When my fury might have proved Like a sleeping beast, (now hearken) And my fierceness a sheathed sword, And my pride a tranquil calmness, Yet no destiny by wrong Or unrighteousness is baffled, Rather these do more provoke it : So that he who means to master Fate, with gentleness must do it, With meek wisdom, not with harshness. LIFE'S A DREAM. 173 Let for an example serve Tliis rare spectacle, this strangest Prodigy, most wonderful Sight of all ; for -what were stranger Than to have arrived to see, After such preventions taken, At my feet a father prostrate, In the dust a monarch fallen ? 'Twas the sentence of high heaven, Which for all he strove to baffle, Yet he could not ; and could I, Less in all things, hope to master, Less in valour, and in years, And in wisdom ? O my father, Thy hand reach me ; Sire, arise ; Now that heaven this way has made thee See thou erred'st in the mode Of o'ercoming it, I place me Here, awaiting thy revenge : On my neck thy feet be planted. He throws himself at his father's feet, having now, indeed, conquered; for he has conquered himself. All else is arranged in a few lines. Astolfo fulfils his pledge to Rosaura, the prince affectionately embraces the faithful Clotaldo, gives his own hand to Estrella, and, when all 174 TRANSLATIONS FROM CALDERON. are wondering at his wisdom and moderation, forbids them to restrain their admiration, even if he should not waken to find himself in his narrow dungeon again, yet Life itself is a dream, which he would fain dream well, that so a blessed awakening may follow. II. THE GREAT THEATRE OF THE WORLD. "VTO Auto of Calderon has yet been translated -L^ into English either in whole or in part. Ticknor has presented in his History of Spanish Literature, an account of one, The Divine Or- pheus* but wholly in prose ; and in prose also The Rambler, Dec. 1855, has given a very fair analysis of TJie Poison and the Antidote. While I am fully conscious of the difficulty of the attempt, and the danger of utter and ridiculous failure, I venture here to offer an analysis of one of them, with sufficient verse quotations to give a some- what clearer conception of what they are than could in any other way be gained. I might perhaps have chosen autos of Calderon in which he soars xipon loftier wing ; but this also seems to me to be admirably conceived and carried out, * Vol. 2. p. 323. 176 TRANSLATIONS FROM CALDERON. and is not quite so strange and startling as some perhaps might appear. The title which it bears, Tlie Great Theatre of the World, will sufficiently indicate its subject. The observation that " All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players," has now become a commonplace, yet is one con- taining in it so deep a moral significance, so pro- found a truth, that it can never grow old or out of date. It is one to which Calderon recurred again and again. Thus in his very noble play To know good and evil, he says : En el teatro del mundo Todos son representantes. Cual hace un Key soberano, Cual un Principe, b un grande, A quien obedecen todos ; Y aquel punto, aquel instante Que dura el papel, es dueno De todas las voluntades. Acabose la comedia, Y como el papel se acaba, La muerte en el vestuario A todos los deja iguales. Nor is he content with making such passing allusions to it ; but in the auto, of which I am THE GREAT THEATRE OP THE WORLD. 177 about to present some specimens, this thought furnishes, as will be seen, the idea on which he has wrought throughout. Before going further let me say to the reader, above all in respect of the opening scene, that what was not intended profanely or even over- boldly, but in strong religious earnestness and reverence, must be taken in no other sense by him ; or, if he is unable so to take it, he will do best in not proceeding any further. In the first scene then the Author appears with a mantle spangled with stars, and the triple rays of light (potencias) on his forehead. He summons the World, which describes itself as being shaped and moulded under his creative word ; and in- forms it of his purpose to set out upon it a great pageant and representation for the display of his power and glory. Men are to be his company. He bids the World that it do not fail to provide richly all things needful to enable the several players to enact their allotted parts. The World in one of the long speeches for which Calderon was famous (the present exceeds two hundred lines) promises obedience; that the properties and furniture shall not be wanting, and so withdraws. And now the Author summons his future company the Rich Man, the Beggar, the K 178 TRANSLATIONS FROM CALDERON. King, the Husbandman,* the Lady or Beauty, the Recluse or Discretion, the Infant, as by a necessary prolepsis they are called, and distri- butes to them their several parts. The passage may well remind one of the distribution by Lachesis of the lots t to souls in The Republic of Plato. The parts are received with different feelings. Some are well pleased ; others disap- pointed. The Beggar for instance, seeing what his part must be, ventures a remonstrance : Why must I be acting so Beggar in this comedy ? 'Twill be tragedy for me, Albeit for the others no* When on me you did bestow This same part, bestowed you not Equal soul and equal thought As on him who king will be ? Why then unto him and me Such unequal parts allot ? Were I made of other clay, * The English word gives exactly the force of the Spanish labrador ; he is no day-labourer in our sense ; for though he labours with his own hands, it is also on his own ground. f" KXjjpovc Kai jStwv Tr THE GREAT THEATRE OF THE WORLD. 179 Or were fewer senses mine, Or a spirit less divine, Did my blood less freely play, Cause sufficient, one might say, Of this dealing would be shown : But it seems too harshly done, That I say not cruelly, When no better man than I So much better part has won. Auth. In the play you act he will As securely win my praise, Who the part of beggar plays With true diligence and skill, As who may the king's fulfil : Equal too they prove, the one And other, when the play is done. Well fulfil thy part, and trust I shall in award be just ; I will know of difference none ; Nor because more pain is laid Upon thee who beggar art, Is the king's a better part Than the beggar's, if well played. One and other shall be paid Freely all their salary, When it once deserved shall be ; N 2 l8o TRANSLATIONS FROM CALDERON. And with any part it can Be so earned, the life of man Being all one comedy. Beau. Wilt thou, Sir, declare abroad Of this comedy, what name Bears it on the tongue of fame P AutTl. ACT YOUB BEST, FOE GOD IS GoD. King. Of all errors 'twere the worst In this so mysterious play To mistake. Rich M. Then every way Need is, we rehearse it first. Disc. But how can it be rehearsed, If without all power we be, Soul to know, or light to see, Till the time arrives to play ? Begg. But without rehearsing, say Can we act the comedy P In the oldest, oftenest played, If it be not re-essayed, Blunders always will ensue : Then, unless we prove this new, Some sad errors will be made. However life is a play which must be acted without rehearsing, and they must accept its necessary conditions. Again, one of the company THE GREAT THEATRE OF THE WORLD. l8l asks how they are to know the times of their entrances and exits. This also, they are answered, it needs not for them to know beforehand; let them be ready at any moment to close their parts. He will summon them when it has reached its end. But how if at any time they are out in their parts, have forgotten or erred ? The Law of Grace will act as prompter to set them right. Hereupon they are going off to the theatre, when the World meets and detains them. World. All things now provided stand To the end the comedy May be acted worthily Which for mortal men is planned. King. Crown and purple I demand. World. Why must crown and robe be thine ? King. Even because this part is mine. World. 'Tis already furnished here. [Gives him crown and purple, and he goes out. Beau. Unto me hues bright and clear, Jasmine, rose, and pink assign. Leaf by leaf, and ray by ray, Emulously let disclose Day whatever lights he knows, And whatever flowers the May ; Let with envy pine away 1 82 TRANSLATIONS FROM CALDERON. The great sun to look on me ; And as his huge disk to see, Evermore the sun-flower turns Flower that for my brightness yearns, Let the sun my sun-flower be. World. But how play'st thou part so vain, Vaunting to the World thy pride ? Beau. By this paper justified. World. Which? Beau. I beauty's part obtain. World. Let all tints of costliest grain, Deepest vermeil, snowiest white, Vary for thee dark and light. \_Cf-ives her a chaplet of flowers. Beau. Hound me richest hues I shed ; Founts, for me your mirrors spread, Flowers, forme your carpets bright. [Goes out. Rich M. Give felicities to me, Wealth and all that wealth can bring ; For to taste each pleasant thing I am come the World to see. World. I will burst my breast for thee, And draw forth to upper air All the hidden treasures rare, All the silver and the gold Which my centre doth enfold, Covetously hoarded there. [Gives him jewels. THE GREAT THEATRE OF THE WORLD. 1 83 Rich M. Proud, elate, and glorious I "With such treasure go my way. [Goes out. Disc. Place to live in I to-day From thy hands to seek am fain. World. And what part dost thou sustain ? Disc. Cloistered Wisdom I must be. World. Cloistered Wisdom, take from me Sackcloth, discipline and prayer, [Gives her a scourge and sackcloth. Disc. I this Wisdom never were, Did I more accept from thee. [Goes out. World. Hast thou then no part to play, That thou cravest nought of mine? Infant. No, I need not aught of thine For the little while I stay. I shall never see the day, Nor with thee shall I abide Longer time than while I glide From one dark and prison room To another ; and a tomb Cannot be of thee denied. [Goes out. World. What dost thou seek, fellow, say ? Husb. What I gladly would forego. World. Pray, no more ; your paper show. Husb. What if I should answer, Nay ? World. From your mien infer I may 184 TRANSLATIONS FROM CALDERON. That as rude and clownish hind You your bread shall seek and find. Husb, Yes, that is my misery. World. Take this spade then. Jusb. Legacy Adam has to us consigned ! \_TaTces the spade and goes out. Begg. Now that thou hast unto those Joys allotted, glories, gains, For my portion give me pains, Give me sufferings and woes : For my paper nothing knows Of that kingly majesty ; Those bright hues come not to me ; Gold nor jewels I demand, But rags only at thy hand. World. But what part may thy part be ? Begg. It is utter wretchedness, Want and weariness and ill, 'Tis to bear and suffer still, It is anguish and distress, All calamities to know, To make trial of all woe ; Importuning, oh harsh task ! Always to have all to ask, Nothing ever to bestow. 'Tis contempt and wrong and scorn, THE GREAT THEATRE OF THE WORLD. 185 It is mockery and blame, It is insult, it is shame, It is every thing forlorn ; Grief that ever one was born, It is squalor, infamy, Tatters, filth, and beggary, Want of all things, and no less Hunger, cold, and nakedness ; For all this is poverty. World. But I will not give thee aught ; For who beggar plays with me, Him I nothing give in fee ; And it rather is my thought Of these rags to leave thee nought On thy back ; for so I will, Being world, my charge fulfil. [Strips Mm. Begg. So this base world evermore Clothes him that was clothed before, But the bare makes barer still. [ Goes out. World. Since the stage is now supplied "With its motley company, For I there a monarch see With his kingdoms broad and wide, And a beauty that with pride Of her charms all senses awes, Great men having great applause, 1 86 TRANSLATIONS FROM CALDERON. Clownish hinds and beggars bare, Or who in still cloisters fare, All brought forward for this cause That the persons they may play Of this present comedy, To whom I a stage supply, Fit adornments and array, Robes or rags, as suit it may, Oh look forth, the pageant see, Divine Author, which to Thee Mortals play ; this earthly ball Let unfold, for there of all That is done, the scene must be. Two globes open with music at the same time; in the one shall be a glorious throne, and on it the Author sitting; in the other the repre- sentation shall take place; this last must have two doors; on the one a cradle painted, on the other a coffin. Auth. Since I have devised this play, That my greatness may be shown, I here seated on my throne, Where it is eternal day, Will my company survey. Mortals, who your entrance due By a cradle find, and who THE GREAT THEATRE OF THE WORLD. 187 By a tomb your exit make, Pains in all your acting take, Your great Author watches you. Enter Discretion, with an instrument, and sings. Let praise the mighty Lord of earth and sky, Sun, moon, and host of heaven ; To Him be praises given From the fair flowers, the earth's emblazonry : Let light and fire their praises lift on high, And ice and frost and dew, Summer and winter too, And all that under this blue veil doth lie, Whence He looks down, who still Is Arbiter and Judge of good and ill. Auth. Me no sound can more engage Than the faithful canticle On man's lips, which Daniel Sang, that so he might assuage The Chaldsean monarch's rage. The Law of Grace acts as prompter, to re- mind each of his part should he forget it, and to correct the mistakes which any may make, and thus the play within the play begins. 1 88 TRANSLATIONS FROM CALDERON. Enter Beauty and Discretion by the door of the Cradle. Beau. Come, and let us hand in band Through these pleasant meadows roam, "Which are May's delightful birth-place, "Which the sun wooes evermore. Disc. That to quit my cell I never Wish, thou hast already known, Never from the pleasant bondage Of my cloister breaking forth. Beau. And with thee must all things always This austere aspect put on ? Not a day of pleasure ever ! Tell me for what end did God The flowers fashion, if the smell Never shall the richness know Of their fragrant censers swinging ? And the birds why made He more, That with their delicious music Float like winged harps of gold, If the ear is not to hear them ? "Why all tissues smooth and soft, If the touch is not to crush them With a free delight and bold ? Wherefore the delicious fruits, If it were not to afford THE GREAT THEATRE OF THE WORLD. 1 89 With, their seasonings to the taste Gates of savors manifold ? Why in short has God created Mountains, valleys, sun, or moon, If the eye is not to see them ? Nay, with reason just I hold We are thankless, not enjoying All the rare gifts God bestows. Disc. To enjoy by admiration That may lawfully be done, Thanking Him the while for all ; To enjoy their beauties no, When we use, indeed misuse, them, He their Giver quite forgot. I abandon not my cloister, Having this religion chose To entomb my life, and thus That I am Discretion show. Beau. I that I am Beauty, while To be seen and see I go. [They part. World. Beauty and Discretion have not Fellowship maintained for long. Disc. How shall I my talent best Turn to profit ? Beau. Make the most Of my beauty how shall I ? L. of Gr. Act your best ; for God is God. I go TRANSLATIONS FROM CALDERON. World. Only one has heard, the other Missed the words the prompter spoke. Others enter, the Rich Man, the Husbandman everything is characteristic, and managed with infinite variety and resource on the part of the poet ; but we must pass over much. Presently the Beggar enters. Begg. Who among all living men May a direr misery know Than is mine ? this rugged soil Is the softest bed I own And the best ; which if all heaven For a canopy it boasts, Lies unsheltered, unprotected From the heat and from the cold. Hunger me and thirst torment ; Give me patience, O my God. Rich M. How shall I make ostentation Best of all my wealth ? Begg. My woe How shall I the best endure ? L. of Gr. Doing well ; for God is God. Sick M. Oh how that voice wearies me. Begg. Oh how that voice me consoles. Disc. To these gardens comes the king. THE GREAT THEATRE OF THE WORLD. Rich M. How it grieves my haughty soul To do homage here. Beau. Myself I will place the king before, To make trial if my beauty Him may in its nets enfold. Husb. I will place myself behind him, Lest he see me, and impose Some new tax upon the peasant : I expect no favour more. Enter the King. King. Of whate'er the sun illumines, Of whate'er the sea enfolds, I am master absolute, I am the undoubted lord. Vassals of my sceptre all Bow themselves where'er I go. What do I need in the world ? L. of Gr. To do well; for God is God. World. She to each and all in turn Still the best suggests and prompts. Begg. From my depth of desolation I unhappy must behold Blisses, which are all for others. Thus the king, the supreme lord, Glories in his regal state, Nor the want remembers once 1 92 TRANSLATIONS FROM CALDERON. That I feel : thus too the lady, On her charms attent alone, Knows not, guesses not if anguish In the world is, want or woe. The recluse, who unto prayer Is addicted evermore, If she serve God well, at least With some comfort serveth God. Nay, the husbandman, when weary He returns from labour home, Finds a decent board prepared him, If it be no sumptuous board. To the rich man all abounds ; And in all the world alone Must I stand in need of all. Therefore I to all approach, For without me they can well Live, but I without them no. Of the lady I will venture First to ask ; for love of God Give an alms. Beau. Ye crystal streams, Which my mirrors are, report What adornments best become me, How my tresses seemliest flow. Begg. Dost thou not perceive me ? World. Fool ! THE GREAT THEATRE OF THE WORLD. 193 Seest thou not thy pains are lost ? How should she remember thee, Who her own self has forgot ? Begg. Since thy wealth exceeds all measure, On my needs an alms bestow. Rich M. Are there then no gates to knock at ? Enterest thou my presence so ? But thou might's t at least have called, Fellow, at the outer door, Nor have pushed in boldly here. Begg. Do not so much harshness show. Rich M. You are troublesome ; away. Begg. "Will he not one alms afford, Who so much has prodigally On his pleasures lavished ? Rich M. No. World. Dives here and Lazarus Of the parable behold. Begg. Since my want and extreme need No respect nor reason own, I will sue the king himself ; Sire, on me an alms bestow. Sing. A. lord-almoner for this I have named. What can I more ? World. With his ministers the king Lulls his conscience to repose. o 1 94 TRANSLATIONS FROM CALDERON. Begg. Husbandman, since thou receivest, Through, the blessing of the Lord, For each grain to earth committed Such an increase manifold, My necessity from thee Craves an alms. Hush. 'Tis at the cost Of good sowing, ploughing, sweating, If I such receive of God. Tell me, are you not ashamed, A huge fellow, tall and strong, This way begging ? Work, I say, Live not idle like a rogue ; If indeed to eat you have not, Take this mattock then and go, You may earn your bread with it. Begg. In the play we act belongs Unto me the poor man's part, But the husbandman's not so. Susb. Friend, be thy part what it may, Thee the Author never told To enact the sturdy beggar. Toil and sweat and labour strong These the poor man's proper part are. Begg. Be it for the love of God ; You are rigorous, my brother. Husb. Shameless you and overbold. THE GREAT THEATRE OF THE WORLD. 1 95 Segg. Give me thou some consolation. Disc. Pardon that it is not more. We pass over a little in which the different parts are further brought out, and resume. The King makes a suggestion. Seeing that this life of ours Is a play and nothing more, And that we are all together Travelling the self-same road, Let its present smoothness lead us Fellowship in talk to hold. Disc. World this were not, if it did not So much fellowship afford. Rich M. Let each tell by turns a story. Disc. That were wearisome and long ; It were better each in order Should his inmost thought unfold. King. I gaze upon my kingdoms far and nigh, The pomp, the pride, the glory that I own; In whose variety has nature shown Her patience and her prodigality. Towers I possess built up unto the sky, And beauty is a vassal at my feet ; Alike before me as my servants meet Whatever is elsewhere of low or high, o 2 196 TRANSLATIONS FROM CALDERON. A monster of so many necks, so strong, So violent that I may wiselier rule, Grant me what lore to monarehs should belong, Lead and instructme, Heavens, in wisdom's school ; For never with one yoke, to all applied, May be subdued so many necks of pride. World. He that he may govern rightly Wisdom asks, like Solomon. A sad Voice from within sings, on the side at which is the door of the coffin. Monarch of this fleeting realm, Grive thy pomp, thy glory o'er ; For on this world's theatre Thou shalt play the king no more. King. Speaks a sad voice in mine ear That the part I play is o'er, Voice which leaves me at the hearing Without reason or discourse. Then will I, my part concluded, Quit the scene. But whither go ? For to that first portal, where I my cradle did behold, Thither ah ! return I cannot. Woe is us ! oh rigorous doom ! That we cannot tow'rd the cradle Make one step, but tow'rd the tomb Each must bring us nearer, nearer ; That the river, ocean-born, THE GREAT THEATRE OF THE WORLD. 197 From the sea drawn up, returning Thither, may be sea once more ; That the rivulet, derived From the river, may restore What it drew from thence, again Being what it was before; But that man what once he has been Never can be any more. If my part has reached its ending, Mighty Author, sovereign Lord, Its innumerable errors Pardon, which at heart I mourn. He goes out at the door of the coffin, as do all the others in their turn. World. Well the king his part has ended With repentance at the close. Beau. From the circle of his vassals, Pomp and glory of his court, Fails the king. Husb. So spring showers fail not At the due time for our corn, With good crops and without king We shall not have much to mourn. Disc. Yet withal it is great pity ; Beau. And a matter to deplore. What shall we do now ? ipo TRANSLATIONS FROM CALDERON. MicJi M. Return. To the talk we held before. Say what in thy thought is passing, Sean. This is passing in my thought World. But the living for the dead Take not long to be consoled. Husb. And above all, when the dead Leave behind them ample store. Beau. I gaze upon my beauty bright and pure, Nor grudge the king, nor to his pomps in- cline ; For a more glorious empery is mine, Even that which beauty doth to me assure ; For if the king the bondage may secure Of bodies, I of souls. I then define With right my kingdom as the most divine, Since souls can beauty to her sway allure. A little world by sages man has been Called ; but dominion if o'er him I claim, Since every world contains an earth and heaven, I may presume, nor thus should overween, Who gave to man of little world the name, Of little heaven to woman would have given. World. She remembers not the saying Of Ezekiel, when he showed How through pride was perfect beauty To corruption foul resolved. THE GREAT THEATRE OF THE WORLD. 1 99 Tlie Voice sings. All the beauty of the world Is a flower of hastiest doom ; Let it fail then ; for the night Of its little day is come. Beau. Let all earthly beauty fail, So has sung a mournful song : Let it fail not, but returning Wear the grace that first it wore. But ah me ! there is, alas ! Neither white nor ruddy rose, Which has to the flattering day And the wooing sun unrolled The rich beauty of its leaflets, But must wither ; there is known Never one to hide itself In its green bud any more.* But what matters that the flower, Short-lived glory of the morn, * I must quote these eight lines in the original for their exquisite beauty : Mas ay de ml ! que no hay rosa De bianco 6 roxo color, Que & las lisonjas del dia, Que a los alhagos del sol Saque a deshojar sus hojas, Que no caduque, pues no Vuelve ninguna a cubrirse Dentro del verde boton. 200 TRANSLATIONS FROM CALDERON. Fade and fail beneath, the kisses Of the great and golden orb ? What comparison with me Can perchance a brief flower hold, In whose being life and death, Scarcely sundered, dwell next door? None, for that fair flower am I, Destined to endure so long That the sun who saw my rising Shall my setting ne'er behold ? If eternal, how can I Ever fail ? O voice, resolve. The Voice sings. Mortal flower in body thou, Though eternal in the soul. Sean. There is no reply to render Unto this distinction more. Forth from yonder cradle came I, And toward this tomb I go. Much it grieves me that my part Has no better been performed. [ Goes out. World. She her part has finished well With repentance at the close. Rich M. From amid her gala pride, Ornaments and glorious shows-, Beauty fails. JIusb. So bread and wine THE GREAT THEATRE OF THE WORLD. 2OI Fail not, nor our Easter pork, Beauty without very much Of regret from me may go. Disc. Yet 'tis a sad thought withal ; Begg. And it well might make us mourn. What shall we do now ? Rich M. Eeturn To the talk we held Before. Husl. When I mark the care immense Which I give my business here, While nor summer's heat I fear, Nor the winter's cold intense, And then mark the negligence In the soul's work by me shown, O'er this lukewarmness I groan, This ingratitude bemoan, Rendering thanks unto the field, Which the crop doth only yield, But to God who sent it, none. World. He is near to gratitude, Who himself a debtor owns. Begg. To this labourer I incline, Though he chided me before. The Voice sings. Husbandman, of all thy toil Has arrived the fatal close ; Thou must till another soil, What that is, God only kno\vs. 202 TRANSLATIONS FROM CALDERON. Susb. If my part fulfilled I have not With the care and pains I owed, I am grieved that I am grieved not That my sorrow is not more. [Goes out. Rich M. From among his ploughs and mattocks, Sweat and dust and labour, lo ! . Disappears the husbandman. Begg. And has left us here to mourn. Disc. What shall we do now P Rich M. Return To the talk we held before. I then, in the rear of others, What is in my mind will show. Who that lives were not dismayed To observe our life a flower, Springing with the morning hour, Drooping with the evening shade ? If it then so soon must fade, Let us enjoy merrily The brief moments as they fly, Let us eat and drink to-day, All our appetites obey, Since to-morrow we must die. World. That the proposition is, Which the Gentiles have put forth ; As Isaiah gaith. THE GREAT THEATRE OF THE WORLD. 203 My turn Follows now, my mind to show. Would the day might perish quite, Day when me my mother bore, Perish utterly the night, When I was conceived before For this woe and undelight. Never let the daylight pure Bid that darkness to have done ; Ever let that night endure, Let it look for light, and none Find of moon or stars or sun. Lord, if I in this way mourn, 'Tis no utterance of despair At my sad estate forlorn, But my lamentations are That in sin I have been born. World. Semblance of despair his passion Wears, but yet it means not so : He his birthday cursing, curses His birth-sin, as Job before. The Voice sings. Its appointed time had joy, Sorrow its appointed close ; To your reckoning come alike, From those blisses, and these woes. Rich M. Woe is me ! 204 TRANSLATIONS FROM CALDERON. Begg. What joyful tidings ! Rich M. And dost thou no shudderings own At that voice which called thee P Begg. Yes. Rich M. Think'st thou not to flee then ? Begg. No. That I shudder at this summons Was but natural to the soul Of a man, who being man, Must have awful thoughts of God. But why flee, when flight avails not ? For if power found no resource Fleeing to its haughty fortress, Nor yet beauty to her boasts, Where should poverty escape ? Rather thousand thauks I owe, For if now my life has ending, With my life will end my woes. Rich M. But to quit the theatre How is it thou dost not mourn P Begg. While I leave no good thing in it ; Of my own free will I go. Rich M. Most reluctant I, whose heart Tarries with its worldly store. Begg. What delight ! Rich M. What misery ! Begg. What sweet comfort ! THE GREAT THEATRE OF THE WORLD. 205 Rich M. What sharp woe ! [They go out . World. In their deaths how different Have the rich and poor man showed. Disc. In effect upon the stage I am tarrying now alone. World. That which longest with me tarries Is religion evermore. Disc. Though she cannot have an end, Yet can I, who her am not In her essence, but one rather Who this better portion chose. And or e'er the summons finds me, I the summons go before Of the grave, who in my life Have entombed myself, and so Give an end to this day's play. You who may the errors note Of to-day, have care to mend them, When arrives to-morrow's show. The stage is left empty; the brief play of life has ended ; and now the World enters to recover from each the properties with which he furnished them during the period of their acting, but which now are theirs no longer. The scene which follows, and which strikes me as a very fine one, will re- mind the classical scholar of one of Lucian's Dialogues of the Dead, greatly as the Christian 206 TRANSLATIONS FROM CALDERON. poet excels the scoffer of Samosata not merely in moral earnestness, which is of course, but also in all his subordinate details as well. The otlava rima in which it is composed, is not of unfre- quent use in the statelier and more solemn parts of Calderon's plays. World. The play was short but what time with the play Of this life did it otherwise befall, Which in. an entrance and an exit may, Rightly considered, be included all ? Now from the stage are turning all away, Their form, and all which they their own did call, Being brought back to its materials just : Dust they shall quit me, as they entered dust. From all I will recover now with care The toys I lent them, furnishing each one, While they their parts on life's stageacting were, Theirs only till the comedy was done. Here to this portal will I now repair, And overpass my threshold there shall none, Till he restore the things he had in trust ; Dust they shall quit me, as they entered dust. Enter the King. Say what the part that was sustained by thec, Being the first who to my hands art brought ? THE GREAT THEATRE OF THE WORLD. 2OJ King. But lias the world so soon forgotten me ? World. Of what has been the world remembers nought. King. I am that one who held all realms in fee, That of the sun a golden light have caught From his first waking in the lap of morn, Till in the arms of night he sinks forlorn. I ruled, I judged, I guided many a land ; I found, I won, I left a glorious name ; Great cares I entertained, great projects planned ; I fought, and victory to my banners came ; I lifted whom I would to high command ; Hare matter I bequeathed for after fame ; And under gorgeous canopies I sate, And thrones and crowns were mine and sceptred state. World. Well, leave, let go, and put this crown aside ; Strip off, renounce, forget that dignity ; Let thy poor person unaccompanied Make from life's farce its exit nakedly. The purple which thou boastest of in pride Soon by another shall invested be, For from my harsh grasp thou wilt seek in vain Crown, sceptre, laurel, purple to detain. King. Didst thou not give me that loved ornament, Then what thou gavest wilt thou take away ? 208 TRANSLATIONS FROM CALDERON. World. Aye, for it was not given, but merely lent, And for the time thou hadst a part to play. Thy trappings, to another to present, I now require, and all thy rich array. King. But how of wealthy seekest thou the name, With nought to give, but what thou first must claim ? What profit shall I after all have won That to the world I have enacted king ? World. According as 'twas well or badly done, 'Twill praise or blame from the great Author bring. Me it concerns not, knowledge take I none What pains were thine, thy part accomplishing : My task is only this array to claim, For naked they must go, who naked came. Enter Beauty. And what was thy part ? Beau. Beauty's perfect bloom. World. What lent I thee? Beau. A faultless loveliness. World. Where is it then ? Beau. Behind me in the tomb. World. Here nature cannot her sharp grief re- press, Seeing how short is beauty's earthly doom, Still growing worse than what it was and less : THE GREAT THEATRE OF THE WORLD. 2Op I seeking to reclaim it, seek in vain ; Thou tak'st it not, nor I with it remain. The king has left his majesty with me, Greatness with me will leave its proud attire, Beauty alone recovered cannot be, Since beauty with its owner doth expire. Look in this glass. Beau. Myself therein I see. World. "Where is the fair face all did once admire ? That which I lent thee do thou now return. Beau. It all has mouldered in the funeral urn. There left I all sweet colours and bright hues, Jasmines and corals I abandoned there, There did I all my flowers, my roses lose, And crystals there and ivory shattered were ; And that did all clear pourtraitures confuse, And tarnished all clear lines and features fair ; There was eclipsed the brightness of my light ; There you will meet but darkness, dust, and night. Enter the Husbandman. World. You, villain, what did you play ? Husb. I was fain To play the villain start not at the name ; How should I else, seeing your fashion vain Must for the husbandman this title frame P He am I, whom the courtier with disdain P 210 TRANSLATIONS FROM CALDERON. Treats evermore, with words of scorn and shame; He am I, though this little grieves me now, For whom the world had still its " thee" and " thott." World. Quit what I gave thee. Husb. What was that, I pray ? World. A. spade I gave thee. Husb. Oh fine implement ! World. Well, good or bad, with that you paid your way. Husb. Whose heart were not for very anger rent ? Why what a cursed world is this, I say ; Of all which avarice is on hoarding bent, A mattock, instrument of wholesome toil, One cannot rescue from the general spoil. Enter the Rich Man and the Beggar. World. Who passes ? Rich M. One who wishes he might ne'er Have left thee. Begg. One who panted every day To leave thee. World. But whence springs this difference rare ? One grieves to quit me, one had grieved to stay. Rich M. Because that I was rich and mighty there. Begg. Because I had the beggar's part to play. World. Let go these toys. THE GREAT THEATRE OP THE WORLD. 211 Lo ! what good cause was mine, Leaving the world to mourn not, nor repine ! Enter the Infant. World. To you a part at first the Author gave ; That you appeared not, how did it befall ? Infant. My life you re-demanded in a grave ; What you had given me, there returned I all. Enter Discretion. World. You, what did you for your adornment crave, When you did at the gates of being call ? Disc. I asked for a strict vow, obedience, A scourge, a cord, and rigid abstinence. World. Well, leave them in my hands, that none may say They have delivered anything from me. Disc. I will not ; prayers and good works do not stay In this world, cannot here detained be; And with me I must carry them away, That something may survive thyself in thee. Thou, if thy mind is, to resume them strive. World. Thee of thy good deeds I cannot deprive : These only from the world have rescued been. King. Who would not now no realms have called his own! Sean. Who would not now have ne'er been beauty's queen! P 2 212 TRANSLATIONS FROM CALDERON. Rich M. Who would not fain have no such riches known ! Begg. Who would not willingly more griefs have seen! Susb. Who would not more of toil have under- gone ! World. It is too late for after death in vain You seek to blot out sins, or merits gain. But now that I have marred the beauteous brow, And the lent trappings mine again have made, That I have caused all haughtiness to bow, That I have equalled sceptre and rude spade, Unto the stage of truth I send you now ; On this one only fictions have been played. King. But why dost thou so rudely us dismiss, Who greeted'st us so fair ? World. The cause is this. What time a man doth anything expect, Waiting the gift his hands he places so ; Which thing when he would scornfully reject, With hands in this wise he will from him throw, Even thus the cradle for a man is decked With mouth above ; reverse its mouth, and lo ! You have his tomb : even thus I gave you room As cradle then, but now dismiss as tomb. Let me take the opportunity which these last THE GREAT THEATRE OF THE WORLD. 213 words suggest of adding something here, which will not be altogether out of its place. There is no surer mark of genius than the recognition of the mystery which so often lies in the common and the familiar. Only genius pierces or lifts the veil which custom and use have for most men so effectually thrown over these, that the most wonderful and most pregnant with meaning has come to have no meaning at all, if only its lesson has been constantly repeated ; according to that proverb, " What is ever seen is never seen." Only genius detects in the humblest very often a significant symbolism of the highest, and finds the ever new in that which is the oldest of all. Calderon will endure excel- lently well to be tried by this test of genius. The mystery of the common, the symbolic cha- racter of many of Our most ordinary actions and customs, is precious to him ; and he constantly seeks to interpret it to others, and not to suffer it to pass by them unobserved. The ever recur- ring mystery of sleep and waking as the daily rehearsal of death and resurrection;* the dews Thus in Behhazzar's Feast : Descanso del suefto hace El hombre, ay Dios ! sin que advierta, Que quando duerme, y despieru. r 214 TRANSLATIONS FROM CALDERON. and sunshine of earth, corresponding to the tears and laughter of those that are its dwellers,* or, as here, the likeness of the tomb to a cradle reversed which has cast out its inmate,t all Cada dia muere, y nace. Que vivo cadaver yace Cada dia, pues rendida La vida a una breve homicida, Que es su deseanso no advierte Una leccion, que la muerte Le va estudiando a la vida. * Al tiempo que ya la salva Del sol estos monies dora Sale riendo la aurora, Y sale llorando el alba ; Risa y lagrimas envia El dia al amanecer, Para darnos a entender Que amenece cada dia Entre lirios y azucenas, Entre rosas y jazmines, Para dos contraries fines De contentos y de penas. f This re-appears in The Steadfast Prince ; Bien s6 al fin, que soy mortal, Y que no hay hora segura Y por eso dio una forma Con una materia en una Semejanza la razon Al ataud y a la cuna. Accion nuestra es natural, Cuando recibir procura Algo un hombre, alzar las manos En esta manera juntas: THE GKEAT THEATRE OF THE WORLD. 215 these have their meaning and lesson for Mm; and to this meaning and lesson he recurs again and again. But to return to our own matter, which is now rapidly drawing to its end ; but yet does not close without some further characteristic touches. Begg. Since the world in this rude fashion From its bosom thrusts us naked, Let us seek that splendid feast, Which has been prepared, the banquet "Which shall recompense our toils. King. Wilt thou too affront my greatness, Daring thus to pass before me? Has it from thy memory faded, Mas cuando quiere arrojarlo, De aquella misma action usa, Pues las vuelve boca abajo, Porque asi las desocupa. El mundo, cuando nacemos, En senal de que nos busca, En la cuna nos recibe, Y en ella nos asegura Boca arriba ; pero cuando, O con desden, 6 con furia, Quiere arrojarnos de si, Vuelve las manos que junta, Y aquel instrumento mismo Forma esta materia muda ; Pues fue cuna boca arriba Lo que boca abajo es tumba. 2l6 TRANSLATIONS FBOM CALDEKON. Wretched mendicant, already That them wast my slave so lately P Begg. Now that thy part is concluded, We are equal, slave and master, In this vestry of the tomb. What thou liast been, little matters. King. How forgettest thou that alms Yesterday of me thou craves.t ? Begg. How forgettest thou that such Thou refused'st ? Beau. So soon failest Thou in the respect thou owest Unto me as richer, fairer ? Disc. All of us are equal now, Having laid aside our garments ; For in this poor winding sheet No distinction more remaineth. Hick M. Do you go before me, villain ? Husb. Leave this foolish dream of greatness ; For, once dead, thou art the shadow Of the sun which thou wast lately. Hick M. Some strange fear in me the prospect Of the Author's presence wakens. Begg. Author of the earth and heaven, All thy company, the players, Who that briefest comedy THE GREAT THEATRE OP THE WOKLD. 217 Played of human life so lately, Are arrived, of that thy promise Mindful, of that noble banquet. Let the curtains be drawn back, And thy glorious seat unveiled. "With music the celestial globe opens once more; but the little which remains may without difficulty be guessed ; at all events it is too serious and solemn to be followed into its details, at least with our feelings and associations seriously and solemnly although this, as all the rest, is both intended and carried out by the great Christian Poet, my brief specimens of whom have now come to their conclusion. APPENDIX. A PERSIAN proverb says, " You may bring a nosegay to the town; but you cannot bring the garden." This is true, and " Beauties of Shakespeare," or " Beauties" of any one else who is indeed beautiful, abundantly attest the truth of the adage. For these "beauties" are in the first place but gatliered flowers, instead of growing flowers; and then besides, they form generally the most insignificant portion of the wealth, whereof they are presented as specimens and- representatives. Still, if they are only offered and accepted at what they are worth, there is no reason why they should not be made; nor should I object to "Beauties of Calderon," if any one were to bring them together. At the same time, the few extracts from him which form the present appendix, are not presented in this sense, or under this aspect ; but rather to give the reader, who may know of him only through this little volume, some further examples besides the few which the 220 APPENDIX. notes have offered, of his metres, his diction, his skill in wielding and calling out the powers of his native tongue. I have of course sought out and selected passages of beauty, as being those by which he would be most justly represented. I. It has been mentioned already that asso- nants constitute the staple of his verse. Here is a rich and poetical description in this metre of a great armament at sea, as it appeared to one who beheld it slowly advancing from a distance. It occurs in The, Steadfast Prince. Yo lo se, porque en el mar Una manana, a la hora Que medio dormido el sol, Atropellando las sombras Del ocaso, desmarana Sobre jasmines y rosas Rubios cabellos, que enjuga Con panos de oro a la aurora Lagrimas de fuego y nieve, Que el sol convirtio en aljofar, Que a largo trecho del agua Venia una gruesa tropa De naves ; si bien entonces ISTo pudo la vista absorta Determinate a deoir Si erannaos, 6 si eran rocas ; Porque como en los matices Sutiles pinceles lograri Unos visos, unos lejos, APPENDIX. 221 Que en perspective dudosa Parecen montes tal vez, Y tal ciudades famosas, Porque la distancia siempre Monstruos imposibles forma, Asi en paises azules Hicieron luces y sombras, Confundiendo mar y cielo Con las nubes y las ondas, Mil enganos a la vista ; Pues ella entonces curiosa, Solo percibio los bultos, Y no distinguio las formas. Primero nos parecio, Viendorpe sus puntos tocan Con el cielo, que eran nubes, De las que a la mar se arrojan A concebir en zafir Lluvias, que en cristal abortan ; Y fue bien pensado, pties Esta innumerable copia Parecio que pretendia Sorberse el mar gota a gota Luego de marines monstruos Nos parecio errante copia, Que a acompauar a Neptuno Salian de sus alcobas ; Pues sacudiendo las velas, Que son del viento lisonja, Pensamos que sacudian 222 APPENDIX. Las alas sobre las olas. Ya parecia mas cerca Una inmensa Babilonia, De quien los p6nsiles fueron Flamulas, que el viento azotan. Aqui ya desenganada La vista, mejor se informa De que era armada, pues vio A los sulcos de las proas, Cuando batidas espumas Ya se encrespan, ya se entorckan, Bizarse montes de plata, De cristal cuajarse rocas. In TJie Great Zenobia, the captive queen answers Aurelian, her boastful conqueror, in the following language. Aureliano, las venganzas De la fortuna son estas, Que ni son grandezas tuyas, !Ni culpas mias. Pues llegas A conocer sus mudanzas, Valor finge, animo muestra ; Que mafiana es otro dia, Y a una breve facil vuelta Si truecan las monarquias, Y los imperios se truecan. Vence y calla ; pues yo sufro Y espero ; para que veas, APPENDIX. 223 Que, pues yo no desconfio, Sera razon que tti temas. No la ambicion te levante Tanto, que midiendo esferas De tu misma vanidad, La altura te desvanezca. Sale el alba coronada De rayos, y el sol despliega Al mundo cendales de oro, Que enjuguen llanto de perlas ; Sube hasta el zenit ; mas luego Declina, y la nocke negra Por las exequias del sol Doseles de luto cuelga. Impelida de los vientos Con alas de lino vuela Alta nave, presumiendo Todo el mar pequena esfera ; Y en un punto, en un instante Brama el viento, el mar se altera, Que parece que sus ondas Van a apagar las estrellas. El dia teme la noche, La serenidad espera La borrasea, el gusto vive A espaldas de la tristeza. II. Little fables, or other narratives, com- positions perfectly rounded and complete in themselves, occur not unfrequently in Calderon's 224 APPENDIX. plays. Here is a beautiful example, drawn from his comedy, The Poor Man is all Plots. Estaba un almendro ufano De ver, que su pompa era Alba de la primavera, Y manana del verano ; Y viendo su sombra vana, Que el viento en penaclios mueve Hojas de piirpura y nieve, Aves de carmin y grana, Tanto se desvanecio, Que, Narciso de las flores, Empezo a decirse amores ; Cuando un lirio humilde vio, A quien vauo dijo asi : Flor, que magestad no quieres, <j No te desmayas y mueres De invidia de verme a mi ? Soplo en esto el austro fiero, Y desvanecio cruel Toda la pompa, que a el Le desvanecio primero. Vio, que caduco y helado Diluvios de hojas derrama, Seco tronco, inutil rama, Yerto cadaver del prado. Volvid al lirio, que guardaba Aquel verdor que tenia, Y contra la tirania Del tiempo se conservaba, APPENDIX. 225 Y dijole : venturoso Tu, que en uno estado estas Permaneciente, jamas Envidiado, ni envidioso. Tu vivir solo es vivir, No llegues a florecer, Porque tener que perder, Solo es tener que sentir. Again, of what exquisite lyric beauty, of what perfect finish and completeness in itself, is the following address to the Cross, in the play called The Devotion of the Cross, which has been referred to already. Arbol, donde el cielo quiso Dar el fruto verdadero Contra el bocado primero, Flor del nuevo paraiso, Arco de luz, cuyo aviso En pielago raas profundo La paz publico del mundo, Planta hermosa, frtil vid, Harpa del nuevo David, Tabla del Moises segundo : Pecador soy, tus favores Pido por justicia yo, Pues Dios en ti padecio Solo por los pecadores, A mi me debes tus loores, Q 226 APPENDIX. Que por mi solo muriera Dios, si mas mundo no hubiera.* III. A considerable number of sonnets are scattered up and down through Calderon's plays. Some of these are among the best which the literature of Spain possesses. This, it is true, is not in itself very high commendation; for Spanish poetry, while it possesses an almost innumerable multitude of sonnets, yet can boast of very few which are of first-rate excellence, which will at all bear comparison with the great Italian or English poems in this kind. Calderon's sonnets are sometimes found in pairs, set one over against the other, and correspond- * They may be rendered thus : Tree, which heaven has willed to dower With that true fruit whence we live, As that other, death did give ; Of new Eden loveliest flower ; Bow of light, that in worst hour Of the worst flood signal true O'er the world, of mercy threw ; Fair plant, yielding sweetest wine ; Of our David harp divine ; Of our Moses tables new ; Sinner am I, therefore I Claim upon thy mercies make, Since alone for sinners' sake God on thee endured to die ; And for me would God have died Had there been no world beside. APPENDIX. 227 ing to, or mutually completing each other, as these two, beautiful in themselves, hut deriving added heauty from the circumstances of those that speak them. Estas, que fueron pompa y alegria, Despertando al albor de la manana, A la tarde seran lastima vana, Durmiendo en hrazos de la noche fria. Este matiz, que al eielo desafia, Iris listado de oro, nieve y grana, Sera esearmiento de la vida humana, Tanto se emprende en termino de un dia. A florecer las rosas madrugaron, Y para envejeeerse florecieron, Cuna y sepulcro en un boton hallaron. Tales los hombres sus fortunas vieron, En un dia nacieron y espiraron, Que pasados los siglos, horas fueron. This, which laments the brevity of the life of the flowers, finds its counterpart in the twin sonnet, which mourns over that of the stars as briefer still. Esos rasgos de luz, esas centellas, Que cobran con amagos superiores Alimentos del sol en resplandores, Aquello viven, que se duelen dellas, Flores nocturnas son, aunque tan bellas, Efimeras padecen sus ardores ; 228 APPENDIX. Pues si un dia es el siglo de las Sores, Una noclie es la edad de las estrellas. De esa pues primarera fugitiva Ya nuestro mal, ya nuestro bien se infiere, Registro es nuestro, 6 muera el sol, 6 viva. <i Qu6 duracion habra que el hombre espere P i O qu6 mudanza habra, que no reciba De astro, que cada noche nace y muere ? And the following is good : Apenas el invierno helado y cano Este monte de nieves encanece, Cuando la primavera le floreee, T el que helado se vio, se mira ufano. Pasa la primavera, y el verano Los rigores del sol sufre y padece. Llega el fertil otono, y enriquece El monte de verdor, de fruta el llano. Todo vive sujeto a la mudanza ; De un dia y otro dia los enganos Cumplen un afio, y este al otro alcanza. Con esperanza sufre desenganos Un monte, que, faltarle la esperanza, Ya se rindiera al peso de los anos. IY. Nothing can be more exquisite than the little fragments of song, tiny drops of melody, which yet sometimes reflect a whole world of thought and feeling, which are scattered through his plays. 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