|
"It is, I think, one of the boldest attempts ever made in English verse. It is, too, as it seems to me, remarkably successful . . . "Nothing, I think, in the English language will give us so true an impression of what is most characteristic of the Spanish drama: perhaps I ought to say, of what is most characteristic of Spanish poetry generally".—tom. iii. pp. 461, 462. |
BERNARD QUARITCH, 15 PICCADILLY, LONDON.
Transcriber's Notes.
- General. To simplify the Hypertext Markup Language programming I have rendered most instances of SMALL CAPITALS as bold text (i.e. text within <b> </b> tags) which I consider to be logically comparable. Bold text does not appear in the original printed source book.
- General. Only the most obvious of printer's errors have been corrected in this electronic edition. Some inconsistent use of quotation marks and several forms of ellipses (with varying numbers of dots and spaces) have been retained as originally published. I have also retained the original's format of contractions, namely to include a space as in "I 'll" rather than "I'll."
- [Contents]. The table of contents is not in the original printed version of this play. I have added it in this HTML version to facilitate internal navigation by hyperlinks.
- [Play], General. Stage directions following lines of spoken text are typically right justified in the printed source. In this electronic edition they simply follow the line of spoken text.
- [Play], General. Various lines are indented in the original to show continuation of a verse line from one speaker to the next. Above I have employed white/transparent graphics with different numbers of horizontal pixels to approximate the relative indentation of these lines as they appear in the printed source.
- [Play], General. In a few places, Denis Florence MacCarthy's (1817-1882) translation as published differs noticeably from a Spanish (or more properly, Castillano) text of the drama, published after this translation, available to this transcriber. I do not have access to the Spanish edition that Mr. MacCarthy used as the basis of his translation, so perhaps a better preserved version of Pedro Calderón de la Barca's (1600-1681) drama was discovered. Or perhaps Mr. MacCarthy used some poetic license in editing the drama. Some differences may be due to printer's errors. Whatever the reason, I have noted below these differences so that a reader comparing this e-book to a Spanish edition will not be confused about these omission, and think them caused by a transcription error of mine, or pages missing from the printed source.
- [Act 1, Scene 2]. Ovid's 'Remedy of Love' is referred to three times, but as 'Remedies of Love' on the third occasion. A Spanish text has "Remedio" the first time, and "Remedios" elsewhere. I have found references to the work as both 'Remedium Amoris' and 'Remedia Amoris.'
- [Act 1, Scene 2]. There is an apparent discrepancy in the play. Chloris is clearly present in the grove, and in "Persons" is listed as one of four priestesses of Diana, yet the lines "We three share;—'t is thy delight" and "For here three objects we behold" imply she is not part of the group of priestesses. There is no stage direction [such as: (Chloris sits behind a tree.] in the printed source, nor in a Spanish text of the play, to explain this. Perhaps (as may be guessed from the line "From their tender years go thither" in the previous scene) the character is an acolyte or novice priestess played by a child. She only appears in this scene.
- [Act 1, Scene 2]. "My blessings on your choice and you! / . . . Are nothing to a pretty face." A Spanish text gives Escarpin seventeen lines here, rather than five. The last dozen lines contain a story of a clever vixen and a comely partridge.
- [Act 1, Scene 3]. The line "Yes, God and Man is Christ" is not indented in the printed source, but logically should be, and is in a Spanish text of the play. I have indented it above.
- [Act 1, Scene 3]. The line "Why delay? Arrest them." in the printed source is shown as two lines ("Why delay? / Arrest them."), but this seems to be a printer's error as it breaks the asonante verse pattern.
- [Act 1, Scene 3]. In order to preserve the verse, I have indented the line "Why, why, O heavens!"
- [Act 2, Scene 1]. I have indented the line "What then?"
- [Act 2, Scene 1]. With the line "Clemency in fine had won," there is another apparent discrepancy in the play. Polemius is angry at Chrysanthus when the soldiers return in Act 1, Scene 3.
- [Act 2, Scene 3]. In the line "Here the jasmin doubly white," the word jasmine is spelt without an "e."
- [Act 2, Scene 3]. In Nisida's song, in the line "The blesséd rapture of forgetting", the printed source has "blessed" without an acute accent on the second "e." Because this line is repeated twice more in the scene with the accent, I have added it to this first instance in the text above.
- [Act 2, Scene 3]. The printed source lists Escarpin as the speaker of the lines "My lord, oh! hearken / To my song once more." A Spanish text indicates that Nisida speaks here, as is only logical, so I have listed Nisida as speaker in the text above.
- [Act 2, Scene 3]. There seems to be a gap in the dialog after "Not myself, no aid is granted." A Spanish text has four additional lines here: [D.] ¿Luego tú tan de su parte / Estás, que á ellos los ensalzas? / [C.] Sí; que he visto muchas cosas / Hoy en mi favor obradas.
- [Act 3, Scene 1]. In a Spanish text, after the line "I could listen to such nonsense?" Escarpin has five lines of monolog.
- [Act 3, Scene 1]. In a Spanish text the line "Whence did sound the voice?" is spoken by Chrysanthus, which would naturally agree with Polemius' reply to Chrysanthus immediately below. Also, just before this line, Chrysanthus says: Sin mí me ha dejado á mí.
- [Act 3, Scene 1]. In the line "The two lover saints of Heaven." the phrase "lover saints" is not hyphenated, although the same phrase is hyphenated just before the end of the play. The Spanish text has "Los dos amantes del cielo" in both places.
- [Act 3, Scene 1]. After the line "The two lover saints of Heaven." there are forty lines of dialog between Escarpin and Polemius. In typical Escarpine style, it contains a story. Here is a free translation: A man is on trial for killing his father and loving his mother. The judge berates the lawyer, "How dare you defend a man who has committed the worst possible crime." The lawyer replies, "I disagree, your Honor, for to kill his mother and love his father would, indeed, have been a worse crime."
- [Act 3, Scene 2]. There is a break in the asonante verse at the line "They the open country seek".
- [Act 3, Scene 2]. In the line "So part pagan and part christian", near the end of the scene, Christian is not capitalized in the printed source.
- [Note 3]. The scene actually ends on page 17 rather than 25 in the source publication. This page numbering problem also occurs in [Note 12] and probably corresponds to a draught version of the publication—a detail not caught in the final editing. The last phrase of this note was actually printed: "the fu ll consonant rhyme." As no letters seem to logically fit in the empty space between "fu" and "ll," I have replaced this with the word "full" in the text above.
- [Note 12]. This refers to [Note 5], which is actually on page 12 in the source publication, rather than page 21.
- [Note 13]. The Spanish text in the section of the drama noted is in five-lined stanzas. However, although Mr. MacCarthy's English generally follows that metre here, he does break the format in a several places.