[588] There were four volumes in all, and Calderon, in his Preface to the Autos, 1676, seems to admit their genuineness, though he abstains, with apparent caution, from directly declaring it, lest he should seem to imply that their publication had ever been authorized by him.
[589] “All men well know,” says Lara, “that Don Pedro never sent any of his comedias to the press, and that those which were printed were printed against his will.” Obelisco, Prólogo.
[590] The earliest of these fraudulent publications of Calderon’s plays that I have seen is in the very rare collection of “Comedias compuestas por Diferentes Autores,” Tom. XXV., Zaragoza, 1633, 4to, where is Calderon’s “Astrólogo Fingido,” given with a recklessness as to omissions and changes that is the more remarkable, because Escuer, who published the volume, makes great professions of his editorial care and faithfulness. (See f. 191. b.) In the larger collection of Comedias, in forty-eight volumes, begun in 1652, there are fifty-three plays attributed, in whole or in part, to Calderon, some of which are certainly not his, and all of them, so far as I have examined, scandalously corrupted in their text. All of them, too, were printed as early as 1679; that is, two years before Calderon’s death, and therefore before there was sufficient authority for publishing any one of them.
[591] Probably several more may be added to the list of dramas that are attributed to Calderon, and yet are not his. I have observed one, entitled “El Garrote mas bien dado,” in “El Mejor de los Mejores Libros de Comedias Nuevas,” (Madrid, 1653, 4to), where it is inserted with others that are certainly genuine.
[592] This correspondence, so honorable to Calderon, as well as to the head of the family of Columbus, who signs himself proudly, El Almirante Duque,—as Columbus himself had required his descendants always to sign themselves, (Navarrete, Tom. II. p. 229),—is to be found in the “Obelisco,” and again in Huerta, “Teatro Hespañol” (Madrid, 1785, 12mo, Parte II. Tom. III.). The complaints of Calderon about the booksellers are very bitter, as well they might be; for in 1676, in his Preface to his Autos, he says that their frauds took away from the hospitals and other charities—which yet received only a small part of the profits of the theatre—no less than twenty-six thousand ducats annually.
[593] All the loas, however, are not Calderon’s; but it is no longer possible to determine which are not so. “No son todas suyas” is the phrase applied to them in the Prólogo of the edition of 1717.
[594] Vera Tassis tells us, indeed, in his Life of Calderon, that Calderon wrote a hundred saynetes, or short farces; about a hundred autos sacramentales; two hundred loas; and more than one hundred and twenty comedias. But he collected for his edition (Madrid, 1682-91, 9 tom., 4to) only the comedias mentioned in the text, and a few more, probably twelve, intended for an additional volume that never was printed. Nor do any more appear in the edition by Apontes, Madrid, 1760-63, 11 tom., 4to; nor in the more correct one published at Leipzig in 1827-30, 4 bände, 8vo, by J. J. Keil, an accomplished Spanish scholar of that city. It is probable, therefore, that their number will not hereafter be much increased. And yet we know the names of nine plays, recognized by Calderon himself, which are not in any of these collections; and Vera Tassis gives us the names of eight more, in which he says, Calderon, after the fashion of his time, wrote a single act. Some of these ought to be recovered. But though we should be curious to see any of them, we should be more curious, considering how happy Calderon is in many of his graciosos, to see some of the hundred saynetes Vera Tassis mentions, of which not one is known to be extant, though the titles of six or seven are given in Huerta’s catalogue. The autos, being the property of the city of Madrid, and annually represented, were not permitted to be printed for a long time. (Lara, Prólogo.) They were first published in 1717, in 6 volumes, 4to, and they fill the same number of volumes in the edition of Madrid, 1759-60, 4to. These, however, are all the editions of Calderon’s dramatic works, except a sort of counterfeit of that of Vera Tassis, printed at Madrid in 1726, and the selections and single plays printed from time to time both in Spain and in other countries. Two, however, have been undertaken lately in Spain, (1846), and one in Havana, (1840), but probably none of them will be finished. See notices of Calderon, by F. W. V. Schmidt, in the Wiener Jahrbücher der Literatur, Bände XVII., XVIII., and XIX., 1822, to which I am much indebted, and which deserve to be printed separately, and preserved.
[595] Roxas, Viage Entretenido, 1614, ff. 51, 52, and many other places.
[596] Don Quixote, ed. Pellicer, Parte II. c. 11, with the notes.
[597] Voyage d’Espagne, Cologne, 1667, 18mo, with Barbier, Dictionnaire d’Anonymes, Paris, 1824, 8vo, No. 19,281. The auto which the Dutch traveller saw was, no doubt, one of Calderon’s; since Calderon then, and for a long time before and after, furnished the autos for the city of Madrid. Madame d’Aulnoy describes the same gorgeous procession as she saw it in 1679, (Voyage, ed. 1693, Tom. III. pp. 52-55), with the impertinent auto, as she calls it, that was performed that year.