the darkness and confusion, to escape through the first door he finds open. "Your name, sir," repeated Don Juan, who thought himself addressing the intruder, and who was brandishing his sword all the while. ""Tis I," replied the husband; "what means this naked sword?" "It is very well you spoke," returned the friend; "for had your lips remained closed, the point of my sword would have made an opening in your breast." After mutual expressions of astonishment, Don Juan began to explain. He informed his friend that he had certainly seen a man in the chamber. The husband declared the thing was impossible, and enjoined Don Juan to silence; for he could not for a moment endure the thought that any supposition, or suspicion, of his dishonour should be entertained by his friend. "If I have been injured," he said to himself, "I will be prudent, and my revenge shall serve as an example to all the world. My silence will quiet her fears of discovery. If a man wishes to revenge himself, his business is to wait, be silent, and strike!" Battaglia, with whose opinions we, in most respects, coincide, remarks, "This is the terrible burden of the piece." Don Lopez sends away his friend, takes a light from the hands of a servant, and, entering an adjoining chamber, finds there Don Luigi, the lover of Leonora, who, assuming an air of boldness, came forward, uncovered his face, which he had concealed in his cloak, and stated that, being attacked by assassins, he had saved himself by entering the first house he could; that he was entirely at the mercy of him into whose premises he had thus abruptly entered. "Kill me, Signor," he continued; "I much prefer dying the victim of an honourable anger, to falling under the daggers of a disgraceful revenge." Don Lopez put on an appearance of belief in this bold fabrication, and, curbing the rage which struggled within him, turned, with placid countenance and gentle words, to his rival, and offered him his own sword, that he might defend himself against those who sought his life: "Now, come," said he, "I will myself conduct you with a light, and show you the way out." In an instant he returns, and, meeting his friend, Don Juan, endeavours to banish from his mind every shadow of suspicion that there had been a stranger in the house. Don Juan pretends to be convinced Leonora comforts herself with the thought that the danger has passed away: but vengeance swells the breast of the husband, Don Lopez. "Who meditates a revenge (he mutters to himself, at the end of the second day), must learn to be patient and silent." The effect of these words, when they fall upon the ear of the spectator, is invariably to chill the blood, and to produce an involuntary, foreboding, mysterious shudder. Truly in these passages there is a grand movement, a real vis poetica: the interest, the anxiety, the emotions, are kept in a state of continually increasing excitement; the heart beats more and more forcibly as scene succeeds to scene. How touching are the situations of Leonora; how terrible the calm of her husband, Don Lopez. These, we repeat, are beauties eminently dramatic, springing from the passions, and not from the developement of character. Meanwhile, the principle, the point of honor, is seen, as a phantasm, to pervade the whole drama, exercising a direful influence, like the fate of the ancient tragedies; and already does it commence its disastrous workings. Don Juan, the friend of the husband, is no less tender than himself of his honour, and, believing him ignorant of the outrage received, is anxious to rouse his friend from his apparent serenity to this he is impelled by duty, friendship, nobleness of spirit, and gratitude. These reflections are common in the Spanish drama; frequent is the resolution to pursue a certain course, for the reason "Que ostenderia Se obrara de otro modo mi nobleza! But Don Juan finds it very difficult, in such delicate circumstances, to know how to comport himself towards his friend, so as to avoid giving him offence. Perhaps it would be right to inform him of all, even the most slender suspicions: perhaps the better way would be to suffer Don Lopez to remain in his blind confidence. Don Juan is still tossed by a thousand perplexing doubts of this kind, when he finds himself face to face before his friend; whereupon under the pretence of seeking advice for himself upon the subject of a scruple which troubles him, and using fictitious names, he divulges his suspicions, and the actual situation of Don Lopez. The latter suffers great pain while listening to the words of his friend; and this internal conflict, his resolute dissimulation, the augmenting fierceness of his purpose of revenge, his highlywrought emotions, gradually increasing in intensity, without discovering themselves, are all portrayed with masterly skill, and constitute beauties of the highest order. In these few minutes, the two friends have arrived at a perfect mutual understanding, without either having uttered a word, directly, of that which was uppermost in the mind of each. A significant reciprocated look terminates the portentous congress; and they part, each silently resolving that the vengeance shall be grand, full, tremendous. In some respects, this mute vow of the two friends upon the altar of vengeance, reminds us of the exclamation (though the circumstances of Inez were of a totally different character) of Don Pietro de Portogallo to his friend : And, in fact, "Va, Roldano; in cupo suono "Nao covreo muito tempo que a vinganza, * See Don Vincente Garcia de la Huerta. But to return to the drama: the King meditates a war in Africa: Don Lopez is at an audience with the King, who asks if he will remain at home by the side of his wife, or follow him to the African war. "I will follow you, Sire," said Don Lopez; to which the King replied by cautioning him to remember, that "the husband who goes from home on a long journey, exposes his family to very awkward accidents." How the suppressed indignation of Don Lopez boiled at this sentence ! How fervid became his infuriated pride; how burning his fatal thirst for revenge! He instantly suspects that his secret is betrayed to the King, and fears that his countenance has betrayed the agonies he has tried to conceal within his breast. As soon, however, as he is alone, he relieves himself by giving utterance to a deep, exasperated heart-grief. But not a single word escapes him of love; not the slightest allusion deigned to a lost affection; not one sentiment of tenderness; not a single regret for happiness snatched away: nothing of the sort. He is absorbed in himself, in the outrage, under the weight of which his offended pride is groaning. The tragic egoism of his fury is carried to the highest pitch in the following monologue, splendid for both its ideas and its loftiness of style : "Now!" said he to himself, "let me just examine the accounts of my honour! Let me see! Have I not been liberal with the poor, just with the soldier, compassionate with the weak, loyal with the gentleman, generous with all? Surely not for this ought I to suffer bitter taunts from my king, or my mind receive so deep a wound!"' Not for one moment did he lament that his wife should love another man: no; he knew too well that he was not sent into the world to correct the world, and much less the female part of it. "I live for vengeance!" he exclaimed; "and the King shall see ; Don Juan shall see; all men shall see the age shall know in what manner a Spaniard revenges himself. But if a man wishes to revenge himself, his business is to wait, be silent, and strike!" And truly the vengeance will be terrible; it will be worthy the half African nature with which Calderon frequently imbues the characters which people his dramas. After the foregoing beautiful scene, in which she is discovered with her lover by her husband, Leonora wishes to see Don Luigi once more. Calderon, in this passage, again describes with a profound knowledge of the human heart, that species of fatality by which true passion increases in proportion to the obstacles it meets, and, deriving nutriment, as it were, from the griefs and impediments themselves, seems to find comfort in the continual encounter of new dangers and pains: on which account Dante terms it "Verace amor che per gli affanni cresce." In Spain, where the passions are very ardent, the courage of every caballero increases with the impediments in his way; and he contemns every danger "por su Rey, y por su Dama." The ladies, in return, are most zealous "por su Rey, y por su Caballero." Unfortunately Donna Leonora, in a moment of blindness, gives Don Luigi a rendezvous in an island near the shore. Just at the moment when Don Luigi is looking for a boat to convey him thither, the husband appears, and, politely addressing his wife's young lover, bestows on him many courtesies, and enquiries, What he is seeking thereabouts? "A boat to carry me to the Quinta del Re," answered Don Luigi. "I myself will conduct you there," eagerly replied Don Lopez; "I will be with you in a moment, and shall be most happy to oblige you, as I have a boat at my disposal close by." Don Luigi accepts the offer, and Don Lopez, with ferocious, but repressed exultation, mutters to himself, The hour of my vengeance is come!" On the other hand, Don Luigi is delighted to find himself thus favoured by fortune. The two gentlemen enter into the boat. Let us not examine too rigorously into the probability of this occurrence; it is within the limits of possibility. We know by experience, too, that the effect in the theatre, when these two enter the boat, is tremendous. "He himself conducts me to his wife," mentally ejaculated the young man. "I am leading him to his death," murmured the husband in a low voice. This said, the boat recedes from the land—is already in the open sea; when a boatman approaches the shore, astonished to see the little bark so far out to sea, and no practised hand to guide it. "Unhappy men," he exclaimed, "they will surely be ingulphed in the sea, unless God have pity on them, for he alone can save them." This is one of those terrible junctures, the powerful effect of which reveals the special character of the dramatic poetry produced under the burning sky of the Sierras, in that land where the east and the west meet together; where the two principles of the Gospel and the Khoran have long battled with all the forms of repulsion or reciprocal absorption. The embarking of the two rivals in the same boat, and the cold irony of the few words they utter, lead on with rapid strides to the final sad catastrophe. The subsequent atrocious scenes, rising in confused perspective before the spectator, and, as a dream of the night, impressing the mind with a sense of indeterminate fear, fills the heart with grief and pain at the approaching disasters. In like manner as the immortal Shakspere, the force of whose genius ever rose with the difficulty of his dramatic combinations, Calderon, so truly wonderful in his art of collecting, and then distributing again, the threads of his web, alternates and combines, with infinite talent, dialogues of an original comic humour with tragic deeds of awful grandeur. To return, however, to our analysis, from which we digressed at the moment of the boat leaving the shore. The next scene is placed on the land between the sea and the country house of Don Lopez. Manrico, his servant, a sort of buffoon, who, to the plebeian mischief-making spirit of Harlequin, superadds a vein of comic and diverting wit, holds a dialogue with Sirena, Leonora's chambermaid; and these frivolities and merriment are thus introduced, we think, with true poetic art, for the sake of diverting, by a few moments of amusing relaxation, the spectator's mind, in order that N. S.-VOL. I. 3 R it may feel more acutely the painful, the tremendous emotions which are shortly to follow. Many rigid dramatic dictators would think it a profanation thus to mingle comedy with tragedy. But, as we have already remarked, Calderon and Shakspere, and many others, both Spanish and English, depict in their dramas life and humanity, such as they appear, with their appalling mixture of tragic and comic, with their alternations of laughter and tears. And so general is this order of things, that, as a talented writer observes, the flower springs up from the tomb, and the day of feasting follows close upon the day of death, without either rendering the other less gay or less gloomy, and without the violet losing aught of its grateful fragrance from its contact with the sepulchral turf; that therefore the jovial laugh of thoughtless dissipation may, in perfect accordance with nature, be placed in close proximity to the tearful cry of Misery bewailing her mournful or tragic sufferings. For ourselves, we fully coincide in the opinion, that this is a faithful representation of the very brief interval which separates joy from grief in the world; and we would cite, in corroboration, the following beautiful line of an Italian poet : Non sai che il riso ha il suo confin col pianto ?" Notwithstanding all the servile admirers of Aristotle, and those who rigidly follow the dramatic lawgivers, there is true philosophy and grandeur of effect in thus assimilating the drama to the mode, and rendering it a faithful mirror, of real life. In this theory, as has been often and justly remarked, which permits the graceful of Calderon, and the insane of Shakspere's King Lear, to introduce their pleasantries and buffooneries among the accents of grief, and the raging of passions,-in this theory is involved the terrible truth, that nothing in this world is certain or durable, and that an invisible chain connects together events the least analogous. Nor ought we to forget that, if there do exist objections to it, their proper place is not in our analysis, because, in announcing the publication of the "Spanish Theatre," we have put forth the confession and definition of our literary faith with respect to the Spanish drama, selecting, as a type and specimen, the "Secret Revenge for Secret Injury." The spirited sallies of the two domestics are interrupted by the entrance of Donna Leonora, and Manrico retires, leaving her alone with her attendant, through whom she seeks to dispel a certain secret foreboding of ill by which she is troubled. She does not attempt to disguise her fault to herself, but is consciously unable to repress the passion with which she is burning. She loves Dou Luigi, and knows but one fear, the fear that her love should not be returned every other affection is absorbed in this; for this alone she exists. Of the jealousy of her husband, which so recently made her tremble with fear, she no longer takes any thought. "After the evening on which he surprised Don Luigi in my chamber," she said, my husband has exhibited even a greater degree of confidence in me-more esteem, more tenderness!" Unhappy 66 |