Eight Dramas of Calderon

EIGHT DRAMAS OF CALDERON
FREELY TRANSLATED BY EDWARD FITZGERALD
London MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1906
All rights reserved

In apologizing for the publication of so free translations of so famous a poet as Calderon, I must plead, first, that I have not meddled with any of his more famous plays; not one of those on my list being mentioned with any praise, or included in any selection that I know of, except the homely Mayor of Zalamea. Four of these six indeed, as many others in Calderon, may be lookt on as a better kind of what we call melodramas. Such plays as the Magico Prodigioso and the Vida es Sueño (I cannot rank the Principe Constante among them) require another translator, and, I think, form of translation.
Secondly, I do not believe an exact translation of this poet can be very successful; retaining so much that, whether real or dramatic Spanish passion, is still bombast to English ears, and confounds otherwise distinct outlines of character; Conceits that were a fashion of the day; or idioms that, true and intelligible to one nation, check the current of sympathy in others to which they are unfamiliar; violations of the probable, nay possible , that shock even healthy romantic licence; repetitions of thoughts and images that Calderon used (and smiled at) as so much stage properties—so much, in short, that is not Calderon’s own better self, but concession to private haste or public taste by one who so often relied upon some striking dramatic crisis for success with a not very accurate audience, and who, for whatever reason, was ever averse from any of his dramas being printed.
Choosing therefore such less famous plays as still seemed to me suited to English taste, and to that form of verse in which our dramatic passion prefers to run, I have, while faithfully trying to retain what was fine and efficient, sunk, reduced, altered, and replaced, much that seemed not; simplified some perplexities, and curtailed or omitted scenes that seemed to mar the breadth of general effect, supplying such omissions by some lines of after-narrative; and in some measure have tried to compensate for the fulness of sonorous Spanish, which Saxon English at least must forgo, by a compression which has its own charm to Saxon ears.