[356] There is in these passages something of the euphuistical style then in favor, under the name of the estilo culto, with which Lope sometimes humored the more fashionable portions of his audience, though on other occasions he bore a decided testimony against it.
[357] This play, I think, gave the hint to Calderon for his “Alcalde de Zalamea,” in which the character of Pedro Crespo, the peasant, is drawn with more than his accustomed distinctness. It is the last piece in the common collection of Calderon’s Comedias, and nearly all its characters are happily touched.
[358] This is among the more curious of the old popular Spanish tales. N. Antonio (Bib. Nov., Tom. I. p. 9) assigns no age to its author, and no date to the published story. Denis, in his “Chroniques de l’Espagne,” etc., (Paris, 1839, 8vo, Tom. I. p. 285) gives no additional light, but, in one of his notes, treats its ideas on natural history as those of the moyen âge. It seems, however, from internal evidence, to have been composed after the fall of Granada. Brunet (Table, No. 17,572) notices an edition of it in 1607. The copy I use is of 1726, showing that it was in favor in the eighteenth century; and I possess another printed for popular circulation about 1845. We find early allusions to the Donzella Teodor, as a well-known personage; for example, in the “Modest Man at Court” of Tirso de Molina, where one of the characters, speaking of a lady he admires, cries out, “Que Donzella Teodor!” Cigarrales de Toledo, Madrid, 1624, 4to, p. 158.
[359] The popular English story of “Fryer Bacon” hardly goes back farther than to the end of the sixteenth century, though some of its materials may be traced to the “Gesta Romanorum.” Robert Greene’s play on it was printed in 1594. Both may be considered as running parallel with the story and play of the “Donzella Teodor,” so as to be read with advantage when comparing the Spanish drama with the English.
[360] Comedias, Tom. IX., Barcelona, 1618, ff. 27, etc.
[361] Comedias, Tom. XXV., Çaragoça, 1647, ff. 231, etc.
[362] These passages are much indebted to the “Trato de Argel” of Cervantes.
[363] See, passim, Haedo, “Historia de Argel” (Madrid, 1612, folio). He reckons the number of Christian captives, chiefly Spaniards, in Algiers, at twenty-five thousand.
[364] Lope, Obras Sueltas, Tom. III. p. 377. I am much disposed to think the play referred to as acted in the prisons of Algiers is Lope’s own moral play of the “Marriage of the Soul to Divine Love,” in the second book of the “Peregrino en su Patria.”
[365] The passages in which Cervantes occurs are on ff. 245, 251, and especially 262 and 277, Comedias, Tom. XXV.