To him she remains constant in spite of the passion of the monarch, who was neither less amiable, less young, nor less captivating. She endeavours in various ways to make known her attachment to Don Henry; and at last, when the king is on the point of receiving her hand, she begs to speak to him alone, hoping to free herself from him by a singular artifice. JUANA. Don Pedro, I have ventured to confide In your known valour and your generous wisdom, His suit, though with a grave and modest carriage. Trenching upon mine honour; yet, believe me, A deeper motive than you think of. Listen! THE KING. Oh, I am lost! A thousand strange chimeras. What shall I JUANA. I seek choice words, and the disguise of rhetoric, Descended the great staircase of the palace I cannot tell it—will you let me write it? THE KING. No, tarry not, my patience is exhausted. Not the doom'd criminal can be more moved Than I am at this tale. THE KING. In God's name, hasten! JUANA. Nay, I will tell you all. THE KING. You torture me. THE KING. Oh, end the tale! My blood creeps through each artery drop by drop. THE KING, Well! and then? JUANA. His mouth ('twas by some fatal accident) Now then you know the hidden fatal reason THE KING. I know, Juana, that this tale is the mere coinage Of your own brain. I know too, that Don Henry In Seville, plotting how to injure me. I know that they will say it ill becomes One of my rank to struggle for your love; That wise men, and that fools will all agree Vengeance exists not undebased with fury, Who hath usurp'd the place reserved for me; Though thine adventure be all false, invented Been only told to me, to seal my vengeance; Henry shall die and I will wed his widow; Then though the tale thou tellest were discover'd, It is neither a tyrant nor a madman who speaks. Don Pedro resolves to commit fratricide, not like a monster, but like a Spaniard, delicate upon the point of honour. He despatches assassins by different routes to discover his brother. In the mean time, Don Henry marries Juana; and the King, when he thus finds the evil without remedy and his honour unimpaired, pardons the two lovers. CHAPTER XXXI. CONTINUATION OF LOPE DE VEGA. Ir is not merely on his own account that our farther attention is directed to the poet whom Spain has designated as the phoenix of men of genius. Lope de Vega merits our attention still more, as having exhibited and displayed the spirit of his own age, and as having powerfully influenced the taste of succeeding centuries. After a long interruption to the dramatic art, and a silence of fifteen hundred years, on the theatres of Greece and Rome, Europe was suddenly surprised with the renewal of theatrical representations, and turned to them with delight. In every quarter the drama now revived; the eyes as well as the mind sought a gratification in the charms of poetry, and genius was required to give to its creations action and life. In Italy, tragedy had been already cultivated by Trissino, Rucellai, and their imitators, during the whole of the sixteenth century, but without obtaining any brilliant success or attracting the admiration of the spectators; and it was solely during the period which corresponds to the life of Lope de Vega, (1562-1635) that the only dramatic attempts of which Italy has reason to boast before those of Alfieri, appeared. The Amyntas of Tasso was published in 1572; the Pastor Fido in 1585; and the crowd of pastoral dramas which seemed to be the only representation adapted to the national taste of a people deprived of their independence, and of all military glory, were composed in the years which preceded or immediately followed the commencement of the seventeenth century. In England, Shakspeare was born two years after Lope de Vega, and died nineteen years before him, (1564-1616.) His powerful genius raised the English theatre, which had its birth a few years before, from a state of extreme barbarism, and bestowed on it all the renown which it possesses. In France, Jodelle, who is now regarded as a rude author, had given to French tragedy those rules and that spirit which she has preserved in her maturity, even before the birth of Lope de Vega (1532 to 1573). Garnier, who was the first to polish it, was a contemporary of Lope. The great Corneille, born in 1606, and Rotrou, born in 1609, attained to manhood before the death of Lope. Rotrou had, before that event, given eleven or twelve pieces to the theatre; but Corneille did not publish the Cid until a year after the death of the great Spanish dramatist. In the midst of this universal devotion to dramatic poetry, we may well imagine the astonishment and surprise produced by one who seemed desirous of satisfying himself the theatrical wants of all Europe; one whose genius was never exhausted in touching and ingenious invention; who produced comedies in verse with more ease than others wrote sonnets; and who, during the period that the Castilian tongue was in vogue, filled at one and the same moment, with pieces of endless variety, all the theatres of the Spanish dominions, and those of Milan, Naples, Vienna, Munich, and Brussels. The influence which he could not win from his age by the polish of his works, he obtained by their number. He exhibited the dramatic art as he had conceived it, in so many different manners, and under so many forms, to so many thousands of spectators, that he naturalized and established a preference for his style, irrevocably decided the direction of Spanish genius in the dramatic art, and obtained over the foreign stage a considerable influence. It is felt in the plays of Shakspeare and of his immediate successors; and is to be traced in Italy during the seventeenth century, but more particularly in France, where the great Corneille formed himself on the Spanish school; where Rotrou, Quinault. Thomas Corneille, and Scarron, gave to the stage scarcely any other than pieces borrowed from Spain; and where the Castilian names and titles and manners were for a long time in exclusive possession of the theatre. The pieces of Lope de Vega are seldom read; they have not, to my knowledge, been translated, and they are rarely met with in detached collections of Spanish plays. The original edition of his pieces is to be found only in two or three of the most celebrated libraries in Europe.' * It is, therefore, necessary to regard more closely a man who attained such eminent fame; who exercised so powerful and durable an influence not only over his native country, but over all Europe, and over ourselves; and with whom we have, nevertheless, little acquaintance, and whom we know only by name. I am aware that extracts from pieces, often monstrous, and always rudely sketched, may probably disgust readers who seek rather the masterpieces of literature than its rude materials; and I feel, too, that the prodigious fertility of Lope ceases to be a merit in the eyes of those who are fatigued with its details; but if they were no longer interesting to us as specimens of the dramatic art, they deserve our attention as presenting a picture of the manners and opinions then prevalent in Spain. It is in this point of view that I shall endeavour to trace in them the prejudices and manners of the Spaniards, their conduct in America, and their religious sentiments, at an epoch which, in some measure, corresponds to the wars of the League. Those too, to whom the Spanish stage in its rude state is without interest, cannot be indifferent to the character of a nation, which was at that time armed for the conquest of the world, There is a copy in the Bibliothèque Royale at Paris, but the fifth and sixth volumes are wanting. and which, after having long held the destinies of France in the balance, seemed on the point of reducing her under its yoke, and forcing her to receive its opinions, its laws, its manners, and its religion. A remarkable trait in all the chivalrous pieces of Spain is the slight honour and little remorse inspired by the commission of murder. There is no nation where so much indifference has been manifested for human life, where duels, armed rencounters, and assassinations, have been more common, arising from slighter causes, and accompanied with less shame and regret. All the Spanish heroes, at the commencement of their story, are in the predicament of having slain some powerful man, and are obliged to seek safety in flight. After a murder they are exposed, it is true, to the vengeance of relations and to the pursuit of justice, but they are under the protection of religion and public opinion; they pass from one convent and church to another, until they reach a place of safety; and they are not only favoured by a blind compassion, but the whole body of the clergy make it a point of conscience, in their pulpits and confessionals, to extend their forgiveness to an unfortunate, who has given way to a sudden movement of anger, and by abandoning the dead to snatch a victim from the hands of justice. The same religious prejudice exists in Italy; an assassin is always sure of protection under the name of Christian charity from all belonging to the church, and by all that class of people immediately under the influence of the priests. Thus in no country in the world have assassinations been more frequent than in Italy and in Spain. In the latter country a village fête scarcely ever occurs without a person being killed. At the same time this crime ought, in reality, to wear a graver aspect amongst a superstitious people, since, according to their belief, the eternal sentence depends not on the general course of life, but on the state of the soul at the moment of death; so that he who is killed, being almost always at the moment of quarrel in a state of impenitence, there can be no doubt of his condemnation to eternal punishment. But neither the Spaniards nor the Italians ever consult their reason in legislating on morals; they submit blindly to the decisions of casuists, and when they have undergone the expiations imposed on them by their confessors, they believe themselves absolved from all crime. These expiations have been rendered so much the more easy, |