comprehend, and which (as we are unfortunately troubled with homely and antiquated scruples as to understanding ourselves, that we may be understood by our readers) we forbear to attempt expounding, we may simply state this remarkable fact: two nations, totally unconnected in their literature, as Spain and England undoubtedly were previously to the formation of their dramatic manner, have nevertheless simultaneously adopted the same peculiarities of composition. They have agreed to consider the dramatic illusion, whatever it may be, capable of being employed on a much more extensive scale: instead of representing a single action confined as near as possible to the natural period in which it really takes place, they have boldly placed a succession of different actions, occurring in different places and at different times, before the spectator, and demanded from his imagination the connecting together and condensing them into a whole. Sometimes, indeed, they have carried this principle to such an excess, as, in the Winter's Tale of Shakspeare, the Dutchess of Malfy of Webster, and the Aurora en Capocabana of Calderon, to introduce into the same piece successive generations: these extravagancies, indeed, are of rare occurrence, and in general have been reprobated by sound and judicious taste. Their success, however, as long as they have restrained themselves from these more violent flights, has been undoubted; the spectators have found no difficulty in following this longer and more complicated train of action; the rapid change of scene does not seem to interfere with their delight, and the poet's magical power of placing his audience at one moment in Thebes, at another in Athens, seems to be admitted. The cause of this success the acute mind of Johnson first detected; and he was at no loss to prove that the more rigid and exclusive system proceeded upon a narrow, if not an erroneous opinion as to the nature of the deception practised upon the audience in a theatre. We are aware that our antagonists will retort upon us, that this argument only proves the writers of both nations to be equally barbarous; and that this common infringement of the laws of composition by no means vindicates us in our rejection of them. But it is not on the ground of our indulging in similar extravagance that we attempt to justify each other, but because we are both found

because our principle is different; because the human mind has been found capable of being strongly moved both in Spain and

We are glad to shelter our want of comprehension under the authority of Mr. Campbell. When I ain left (says he) to infer that all this is right on romantic principles, I confess that those principles become too romantic for my conception.'-Essay, p. 155.

England

England by this less harmonious, less simple, but at the same time more copious and varied species of dramatic representation. In fact the earlier mode of composition seems to have been very much the same in both countries: the chronicle or the novel selected for the groundwork was broken into scenes, and cast into dialogue; with us, as our five acts required more matter than the shorter pieces of the Spaniards, a second tale was often engrafted as an underplot, being more or less artfully connected with the main story according to the skill of the poet. The Spanish piece, however, was very rarely without the comic accompaniment of the Gracioso, passing with as rapid a transition from grave to gay, from tragic to comic effect, as in Shakspeare himself.

Nevertheless, though this remarkable resemblance exists between the two theatres, yet in other respects they are totally and entirely distinct. Our own national drama, that, we mean, of Shakspeare and his contemporaries, is the drama of human character. The soul of man is the subject of its delineation; the action and the circumstances of the piece are entirely subordinate and subservient to the displaying of the passions and affections of the persons represented. The interest of the piece, though sometimes most skilfully maintained, is nevertheless a secondary object; the attention is fixed almost entirely on the actions and the language of the leading characters, not so much because they conduce to the event of the piece, as because they make us, as it were, familiar with the personages before us. Hence the nature and the truth of their portraits; we do not shudder and weep merely because situations of danger and distress are placed before us, but because the language of those who address us is that of human beings under acute suffering, or violent emotion. Hence the bursts of poetry, the passages of empassioned eloquence, the delicate touches of feeling-all which betray the heart within, and admit us to a communion and a sympathy with the speaker; hence the profound though unobtrusive morality; hence the solemn train of reflection—the more than philosophic meditation into which they so often force the mind of the reader or hearer.

In the Spanish theatre it is exactly the reverse-the interest is every thing; the characters comparatively are nothing. If the feelings are generally at ease, the curiosity is never at rest; incident crowds on incident in endless variety, sometimes entirely unexpected, sometimes most subtly and artfully prepared. The breathless audience appear to hurry on, little caring in what manner the personages express themselves, only anxious to know how they are to be extricated from their difficulties, and how the conclusion is to be brought about. A Spanish play is a continued adventure;

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adventure; indeed we might, without being too fanciful, almost conceive them to have grown out of the Romance,' or tale in verse, as the tragedies of Greece grew out of the dithyrambic ode; increased indeed in length, but having lost little of their original liveliness. In truth were this not the case, were it not for the vivid and rapid action pervading every piece, we could not pos-, sibly endure the everlasting repetition of the same dramatis personæ, acting from the same principles, and influenced by the same passions: the lover, faithful as Amadis, and almost as much given to poetry as Antar; the mistress relaxing by regular gradation from the lofty prude to the love-sick maiden; the brother jealous as the pard' of his sister's honour; the gracioso and the criada, with their amusing parody on the high-flown phrases and unremitting constancy of their superiors. The mind, therefore, is in a perpetual state of pleasing excitement, yet can rarely revert to any particular passage by which it has been strongly affected; there are no pages to which we recur again and again with unwearied and encreasing delight. While, on the one hand, we are sure of never being wearied by prolixity, or composed to sleep by languor, we are, on the other, almost secure against being elevated into rapture, or melted into tears: we are little attached to the characters while they are present before us; but are irresistibly impelled to inquire into their future destiny. The judicious remarks of Lord Holland on the genius of Lope de Vega may be applied generally to the Spanish drama. On the whole, the fertility of his genius in the contrivance of interesting plots, is as surprizing as in the composition of verse. Among the many I have read I have not fallen on one which does not strongly fix the attention; and though many of his plots have been transferred to the French and English stage, and rendered more correct and more probable, they have seldom or never been improved in the great article of exciting curiosity and interest. This was the spell by which he enchanted the populace, to whose taste for wonder she is accused of having sacrificed so much solid reputation. True it is that his extraordinary and embarrassing situations are often as unprepared by previous events as they are unforeseen by the audience; they come upon us by surprize, and when we know them we are as much at a loss to account for such wonderful occurrences as before; they are produced, not for the purpose of exhibiting the peculiarities of character, or the workings of nature, but with a view of astonishing the audience with strange, unexpected, unnatural, and often inconsistent conduct in some of his principal characters. Nor is this the only defect in his plots. The personages, like the author, are full of intrigue and invention, and while they lay schemes, and devise plots, with as much ingenuity

as

as Lope himself, they seem to be actuated by the same motives also; for it is difficult to discover any other than that of diverting and surprizing the audience. Their efforts were generally attended with success. All contemporary authors bear testimony to the popularity of Lope's pieces; and for many years he continued the favourite of the public. Stories are related of the audience taking so lively an interest in his plays, as totally to give way to illusion, and to interrupt the representation. A spectator on one occasion is said to have interfered with great anxiety for the protection of an unfortunate princess-" dando voces," says my author, "contra el cruel homicida que degollaba al parecer una dama innocente"-crying out against the cruel murderer, who to all appearance was slaying an innocent lady.'

This acute and discriminating criticism will justify us, we conceive, in leaving Lope de Vega in the hands of his noble biographer, more especially as his lordship has apparently done his author ample justice in the play which he has selected as a specimen of his works, and of which he has given an abstract. The Estrella di Sevilla' is far superior to all the works of Lope which have fallen into our hands; indeed the arrangement of the plot is excellent. The three other plays which are contained in the Spanish Theatre,' now publishing with great credit to the editor, in London, offer fair specimens of his general manner; we should, however, willingly have exchanged one of them for the Arauco domado,' the extracts from which by M. Sismondi appear fully to justify the praise bestowed on it by that judicious critic.

Cervantes, whose history is one of the darkest in the martyrology of genius, among the various literary projects to which bitter poverty and distress reduced him, turned his attention to the theatre of his country. There is a melancholy nobleness in the tone and language with which he speaks of his more successful rival, Lope, who was basking in the favour of princes, and in a state of respectability and opulence, which, although it might not satisfy his own inordinate desires, and with which indeed he frequently expresses himself discontented, presented nevertheless a strong contrast to that of the wandering and indigent Cervantes'that prodigy of nature, the great Lope de Vega, who raised himself to the monarchy of the stage, and brought beneath his jurisdiction all the old farce-writers (los farsantes).' Of the dramatic works of Cervantes himself the greater part have perished, and of those which survive, the two contained in the present selection, the Numancia and the Trato di Argel, have alone obtained any celebrity. The latter is a confused, though at the same time a distinct representation of three plots, which, with scarcely any mutual connexion, interfere with and delay the interest each of the

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other:

other: its great attraction is that, like the Araucana of Ercilla, it is a sort of personal poem; the adventures of the author, during his slavery, being said to be described under one of the characters.

But the Numancia is in a higher strain. Rude in its conception, broken in its narration by the introduction of various allegorical personages, and with little of what is called plot, its simple energy and the dreadful reality of its incidents arrest the attention most forcibly; and we forget, in the spirit and strength of the outline, the obvious deficiency in the rest of the picture. From the days of Saguntum to those of Zaragoza, Spain has been remarkable for the obstinacy and unconquerable fortitude with which her cities have resisted their besiegers; nor had any people ever a better right to emblazon the legend pro aris et focis' on their banner, than the Numantines. The poet has felt like a true descendant of such ancestors, and seems to take a pride in the undaunted and unbroken resolution with which he makes his characters endure the most awful horrors of war, and the most aggravated miseries of famine. There is no prominent or predominant character; the Numantine people are the hero of the piece; the love of Morandro and Lira, though the part on which the reader dwells with the greatest sympathy, is still strictly subordinate to the general design. It has been justly observed that there is a considerable resemblance in the construction and conduct of this piece to the ruder works of Eschylus, more particularly his Persæ;' there is the same absence of individual interest, the same reliance on the incidents as they are placed successively before the spectator, with an utter neglect of artificially connecting them, and making them grow one from the other; the same hardy and unpolished energy of manner, though we would not compare Cervantes with Eschylus in point of poetical merit. The Numancia opens with a dialogue between Scipio and Jugurtha, in which the former, to whom the Senate has entrusted the final reduction of the rebellious city, complains of the luxury and want of discipline in his army. He therefore orders them to be summoned before him; upon which, according to the stage direction, as many soldiers as possible enter, armed in the ancient manner, without harquebusses,' and, after an eloquent reproof and exhortation from him, swear to conquer Numancia, or to die. The scene is concluded by the entrance of two ambassadors from the city; but their tone of defiance mingled with submission is answered by a demand of unconditional surrender, against which their spirits revolt, and the conference ends with declarations of mutual hostility. After this enters a lady crowned with towers, and with a castle in her hand, who signifies Spain.' She in