V

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 your enjoyment if you will.*

I must not leave the points of contact or opposition between Shakespeare's drama and Calderon'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 volle reife Traube vom Stock, wir mögen sie nun beliebig Beere für Beere geniessen, sie auspressen, keltern, als Most, als gegohrnen Wein kosten oder schlürfen, auf jede Weise sind wir erquickt. Bei Calderon dagegen ist dem Zuschauer, dessen Wahl und Wollen nichts überlassen; wir empfangen abgezogenen, höchst rectificirten Weingeist, mit manchen Spezereien geschärft, mit Sussigkeiten gemildert; wir müssen den Trank einnehmen, wie er ist, als schmackhaftes köstliches Reizmittel, oder ihn abweisen. Goethe is here reviewing a German translation of The Daughter of the Air. (Werke, Paris, 1836, b. 5. p. 61.)

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 that ends Well-Love's Labour's 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 Shakespeare; 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,* containing oftentimes the true key to the poet's meaning. Let me adduce the following in proofLife's a Dream-The Two Lovers of Heaven— The Fairy Lady-The Loud Secret-Weep, Woman, and conquer-Beware of still WatersWhite 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 Poëseos dramaticæ genere Hispanico, præsertim de Calderone Dissert. Inauguralis, Hafniæ, 1817. p. 16.

lithering

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 without one. There is a just humility that will maintain thine own dignity, and yet make thee insensible to many a rub that galls the proud spirit. 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 advertised among us, he would carry off all the scholars,""

Be

I

CHAPTER III.

THE GENIUS OF CALDERON.

(HIS AUTOS.)

HAVE spoken more than once of the admi

ration of Augustus Schlegel for Calderon. 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 language. Speaking of Calderon he says (De Hispanorum Literatura, Turin, 1758, p. 75): Certe inter primi subsellii poëtas clarissimum hunc virum adnumerandum, nemo unus qui ejus libros legerit inficiabitur; præsertim si acta quæ vulgo sacramentalia vocantur diligenter examinet; in quibus neque in inveniendo acumen, nec in disponendo ratio, neque in ornando aut venustas, aut nitor, aut majestas desiderabitur.

which occurs in the Dramatic Lectures, has been often and justly admired; although it must be confessed that, despite of all the pomp and magnificence 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 flourishing 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 production, and one deeply rooted in the affections 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