[373] It is in the twenty-fourth volume of the Comedias of Lope, Madrid, 1632, and is one of a very few of his religious plays that have been occasionally reprinted.
[374] “Historia de Tobias,” Comedias, Tom. XV., Madrid, 1621, ff. 231, etc.
[375] “La Hermosa Ester,” Ibid. ff. 151, etc.
[376] “El Robo de Dina,” Comedias, Tom. XXIII., Madrid, 1638, ff. 118, etc. To this may be added a better one, in Tom. XXII., Madrid, 1635, “Los Trabajos de Jacob,” on the beautiful story of Joseph and his brethren.
[377] The underplot is slightly connected with the main story of Esther, by a proclamation of King Ahasuerus, calling before him all the fair maidens of his empire, which, coming to the ears of Silena, the shepherdess, she insists upon leaving her lover, Selvagio, and trying the fortune of her beauty at court. She fails, and on her return is rejected by Selvagio, but still maintains her coquettish spirit to the last, and goes off saying or singing, as gayly as if it were part of an old ballad,—
For the vulture that flies apart,
I left my little bird’s nest;
But still I can soften his heart,
And soothe down his pride to rest.
The best parts of the play are the more religious; like Esther’s prayers in the first and last acts, and the ballad sung at the triumphant festival when Ahasuerus yields to her beauty; but the whole, like many other plays of the same sort, is intended, under the disguise of a sacred subject, to serve the purposes of the secular theatre.