Calderon (Classic Reprint) - Hardcover

Inhaltsangabe

Excerpt from Calderon

Be difficult of comprehension to nations more devoted to the material and the utilitarian; and that to them its results may appear fantastic. For, as the historian of Spanish literature goes on to say, the energy, the fancy, which, earlier, produced the beautiful ballads of Spain, the force of national character which drove the Moors from Toledo, Seville, and Granada, called forth, directed, and controlled, in the seventeenth century, a dramatic literature, which grew out of the national genius and the condition of the mass of the people. The Spanish drama, in its highest and most heroic forms, was still a popular entertainment. Its purpose was not only to please all classes, but to please all equally. Whether the story the mass of people saw enacted were probable or not, was to them a matter of small consequence. But it was necessary that it Should be interesting. Above all, it was necessary that it should be Spanish and therefore, though its subject might be Greek or Roman, oriental or mythological, the characters represented were always Castilian, and Castilian after the fashion of the seventeenth century, governed by Castilian notions of gallantry and the Castilian point of honour. Not there fore without an effort, can a reader of alien clime place himself at the right point of view from which to enjoy what so enraptured the people of Madrid two centu ries ago. A theatre that did not model itself on the antique, which was uninfluenced by Lope de Vega's con temporary, Shakespeare, and which was founded on the strongly-marked peculiarities of a national character very unlike our own, may fail to attract at first sight; however curiosity may be stimulated by the promise of a drama which, in many of its attributes and character.

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