All this account, however, incomplete as it is, of the different editions, translations, and imitations which, for above two centuries, have been poured out upon the different countries of Europe, gives, still, but an imperfect measure of the kind and degree of success which this extraordinary work has enjoyed; for there are thousands and thousands who never have read it, and who never have heard of Cervantes, to whom, nevertheless, the names of Don Quixote and of Sancho are as familiar as household words. So much of this kind of fame is enjoyed, probably, by no other author of modern times.
APPENDIX, F.
ON THE EARLY COLLECTIONS OF OLD SPANISH PLAYS.
(See Vol. II. p. 429.)
Two large collections of plays, and several small ones, much resembling each other, both in the character of their contents and the form of their publication, appeared in different parts of Spain during the seventeenth century, just as the ballads had appeared a century before; and they should be noticed with some care, because they exhibit the peculiar physiognomy of the Spanish national drama with much distinctness, and furnish materials of consequence for its history.
Of the first collection, whose prevailing title seems to have been “Comedias de Diferentes Autores,” it would, I suppose, be impossible now to form a complete set, or one even approaching to completeness. I possess only three volumes of it, and have seen satisfactory notices of only two more. The first of the five is the twenty-fifth volume of the collection itself, and was printed at Saragossa, in 1633, by Pedro Escuer. As is usual with such volumes of the old Spanish dramatists, it is in small quarto and contains twelve plays, seven of which are attributed to Montalvan, then at the height of his success as a living author, and one to Calderon, who was just rising to his great fame; but one of the seven plays of Montalvan belongs to his master, Lope de Vega, and the only one taken from Calderon is printed from a text grossly corrupted. The twenty-ninth volume was printed at Valencia, in 1636, and the thirty-second at Saragossa, in 1640; but I have seen neither of them. In the thirty-first, printed at Barcelona, in 1638, all the twelve plays are given without the names of their authors, though the persons who wrote most of them are still known; and the forty-third volume was printed at Saragossa, in 1650, containing plays by Calderon, Moreto, and Solís, with enough by more obscure authors to make up the regular number of twelve. It is no doubt singular, that, of a collection like this, extending to at least forty-three volumes, so little should now be known. But such is the fact. The Inquisition and the confessional were very busy in the latter part of the seventeenth century, when, under the imbecile Charles the Second, the theatre had fallen from its high estate; and in this way the oldest large collection of plays published in Spain, and the one we should now be most desirous to possess, was hunted down and nearly exterminated.
The next, which is the collection commonly known under the title of “Comedias Nuevas Escogidas de los Mejores Autores,”—a title by no means strictly adhered to in its successive volumes,—was more fortunate. Still it is very rare. I have never seen a set of it absolutely complete; but I possess in all forty-one volumes out of the forty-eight, of which such a set should consist, and have sufficiently accurate notices of the remaining seven.
The first of these volumes was published in 1652, the last in 1704; but, in the latter part of the period embraced between these dates, the theatre so declined, that, though at first two or three volumes came out every year, none was issued during the twenty-three years that followed the death of Calderon in 1681, except the very last in the collection, the forty-eighth. Taken together, they contain five hundred and seventy-four comedias, in all the forms and with all the characteristics of the old Spanish drama; their appropriate loas and entremeses being connected with a very small number of them. Thirty-seven of these comedias are given as anonymous, and the remaining five hundred and thirty-seven are distributed among one hundred and thirty-eight different authors.