Chapter VIII: “Calaynos the Moor” “Gayferos” and “Count Alarcos”
I bracket these three romances together in this chapter not only because they appear to have been held in the highest favour by the people of Old Spain, but for the equally good reason that they seem to me to manifest the national taste and genius more markedly than others of the same class, if, indeed, they did not belong to a class by themselves, as I have always suspected they did, for in all Castilian accounts of romantic fiction they are frequently mentioned together, and this traditional treatment of them may arise from the consciousness of their similarity of genre. But above and beyond this they possess and enshrine that grave and austere spirit so typical of all true Spanish literature, and at least one of them is deeply tinged with the atmosphere of fatal and remorseless tragedy which only the Latin or the Hellene knows how to evoke, for not the greatest masters of the Northern races, neither Marlowe nor Massinger, Goethe nor Shakespeare, can drape such sombre curtains around their stage as Calderon or Lope.