Gives pronunciation and etymologies, with date of first occurrence of each word. Scholarly and practical.
Edgren's Italian and English Dictionary viii+1028 pp. 8vo. Retail price, $3.00.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Professor Hugo Albert Rennert, in his excellent and exhaustive work entitled The Life of Lope de Vega, from which many of the details of this Introduction are taken, quotes at length from Tomillo and Pérez Pastor's Datos Desconocidos the Spanish criminal records of the Proceso de Lope de Vega por Libelos contra unos Cómicos. In the course of the procedure much light is thrown upon this period of Lope's life.
[2] Égloga á Claudio, Obras Sueltas, Vol. IX, p. 367.
[3] Lope was by no means unaware of his important influence on the Spanish theater. In his Epístola á Don Antonio de Mendoza he evinces it in the following lines:
Necesidad y yo partiendo á medias
el estado de versos mercantiles,
pusimos en estilo las Comedias.
Yo las saqué de sus principios viles,
engendrando en España más Poetas,
que hay en los ayres átomos sutiles.
Obras Sueltas, vol. I, p. 285.
[4] Obras Sueltas, Vol. IX, p. 368.
[5] I have not been able to verify on what foundation Hartzenbusch bases the statement that the play was written first in 1625. It is true that several historical events which took place about that year are alluded to in the work in a way to indicate that they were fresh in the mind of the author, but they do not offer conclusive proof. It does not appear in the twenty-five Partes or collections of Lope's dramas, and it is doubtful if it was published in any regular edition during the poet's life. In a note, Act II, Scene III, Hartzenbusch mentions "la edición antigua de la comedia," but does not specify to what edition he refers. The play appears in Comedias de Diferentes Autores, Vol. XXXVII, Valencia, 1646, but it is not certain or even probable that this is the first time it was published.
[6] The sun was setting and a comedia was approaching its last phase, precursor of the denouement. It was presented in a theater of Madrid (or corral as it was then called) by four gallants, two ladies, an old man, two graciosos, two graciosas, and other minor characters, before an audience with hats pulled down as those who had no other roof above them than that of heaven. Already the leading lady had made her last entry, decked in the richest costume of her wardrobe; her lover, absorbed by the noble bearing of that woman who, although a humble servant, knew, nevertheless, the pompous farthingale as if in all her life she had not worn any other style of skirt; blind with passion and trampling on the respect due his lineage, had approached her and, beside himself, seizing her hand, had offered her his. The second gallant had resolutely opposed the irregular and hasty match, but on hearing that the supposed Isabel bore as true name the illustrious one of Doña María Guzmán y Portocarrero and was, although a water-maid, a relative of the Duke of Medina, his resistance had vanished. Then with a sweeping and silent bow to the fiancée the actor approached the front of the stage to pronounce this brief address to the public: