UALDERON. 73 



'* At the period when Spanish comedy had attained its fullest 

 development," says my friend Ludwig Tieck, one of the pro- 

 ibundest critics of dramatic literature, " we often find, in the 

 romanesque and lyrical meter of Calderon and his cotempo- 

 raries, dazzlingly beautiful descriptions of the sea, of mount- 

 ains, gardens, and sylvan valleys, but these are always so inter- 

 woven with allegorical allusions, and adorned with so much 

 artificial brilliancy, that we feel we are reading harmoniously 

 rhythmical descriptions, recurring continually with only slight 

 variations, rather than as if we could breathe the free air of 

 nature, or feel the reality of the mountain breath and the val- 

 ley's shade." In the play of Life is a Dream {la vida es 

 sueno), Calderon makes the Prince Sigismund lament the 

 misery of his captivity in a number of gracefully-drawn con- 

 trasts with the freedom of all organic nature. He depicts 

 birds " which flit with rapid wings across the wide expanse 

 of heaven ;" fishes, " which but just emerged from the mud 

 and sand, seek the wide ocean, Avhose boundlessness seems 

 scarcely sufiicient for their bold course. Even the stream 

 which winds its tortuous way among flowers finds a free pas- 

 sage across the meadow ; and I," cries Sigismund, in despair, 

 " I, who have more life than these, and a freer spirit, must 

 content myself with less freedom !" In the same manner 

 Don Fernando speaks to the King of Fez, in The Steadfast 

 Prince, although the style is often disfigured by antitheses, 

 witty comparisons, and artificially-turned phrases from the 

 school of Gongora.* I have referred to these individual ex- 

 amples because they show, in dramatic poetry, which treats 

 chiefly of events, passions, and characters, that descriptions 

 become merely the reflections, as it were, of the disposition 

 and tone of feeling of the principal personages. Shakspeare, 

 who, in the hurry of his animated action, has hardly ever 

 time or opportunity for entering deliberately into the descrip- 

 tions of natural scenery, yet paints them by accidental refer- 

 ence, and in allusion to the feelings of the principal charac- 

 ters, in such a manner that we seem to see them and live in 

 them. Thus, in the Midsummer Night's Dream, we live in 

 the wood ; and in the closing scenes of the MercJiant of Ven- 

 ice, we see the moonshine which brightens the warm sum- , 

 mer's night, without there being actually any direct descrip- 

 tion of either. *' A true description of nature occurs, howev- 



* Calderon, in The Steadfast Prince, on the approach of the fleet, 

 A.ct i., scene 1; and on the sovereignty of the wild beasts iu the forests, 

 A.ct ill., scene 2. 



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