[1] I will not answer for the accuracy of my version of this dilemma at Ombre: neither perhaps could Lazaro for his: which, together with the indifference (I presume) of all present readers on the subject, has made me indifferent about it. Cesar, I see, starts with almost the same fine hand Belinda had, who also was

as he was, but, unlike him, saved by that unseen king of hearts that

[2] The ambition for a coach, so frequently laughed at by Calderon, is said to be in full force now; not for the novelty of the invention, then, nor perhaps the dignity, so much as for the real comfort of easy and sheltered carriage in such a climate.

[3] This little song is from the Desdicha de la Voz.

[4] One cannot fail to be reminded of the multiplication of Falstaff’s men in buckram, not the only odd coincidence between the two poets. Lazaro’s solution of the difficulty seems to me quite worthy of Falstaff.

[5] Vicente’s flirtation with the two Criadas, and its upshot, is familiar to English play-goers in the comedy of ‘The Wonder.’

[6]

[7] The Biographie Universelle says it was Don Pedro of Castile about whose cognomen there was some difference of opinion; a defence of him being written in 1648 by Count de Roca, ambassador from Spain to Venice, entitled, ‘El Rey Don Pedro, llamado el Cruel, el Justiciero, y el Necessitado, defendido.’ It is he, I suppose, figures in the ‘Medico de su Honra.’ He flourished at the same time, however, with his namesake of Arragon.

[8]

[9] Don Lope de Figueroa, who figures also in the Amar despues de la Muerte, was (says Mr. Ticknor) ‘the commander under whom Cervantes served in Italy, and probably in Portugal, when he was in the Tercio de Flandes,—the Flanders Regiment,—one of the best bodies of troops in the armies of Philip II.,’ and the very one now advancing, with perhaps Cervantes in it, to Zalamea.

[10] ‘A hoop of whalebone, used to spread out the petticoat to a wide circumference;’—Johnson; who one almost wonders did not spread out into a wider circumference of definition about the ‘poore verdingales,’ that (according to Heywood)

The Spanish name is ‘guarda infanta,’ which puzzles Don Torribio, as to what his cousin had to do with infants. Our word was first (as Heywood writes) verdingale: which, as Johnson tells us, ‘much exercised the etymology of Skinner, who at last seems to determine that it is derived from vertu garde.’ This, however, Johnson thinks does not at all get to the bottom of the etymology, which may, he says, be found in Dutch. Perhaps the old French petenlair was of the same kindred.

[11] The Phenomena that follow, and are here supposed to be magic illusions created in Cipriano’s Eyes, are in the original represented by theatrical Machinery.

[12] As this version of Calderon’s drama is not for acting, a higher and wider mountain-scene than practicable may be imagined for Rosaura’s descent in the first Act and the soldiers ascent in the last. The bad watch kept by the sentinels who guarded their state-prisoner, together with much else (not all!) that defies sober sense in this wild drama, I must leave Calderon to answer for: whose audience were not critical of detail and probability, so long as a good story, with strong, rapid, and picturesque action and situation, was set before them.

[13] ‘Some report that they’—(panthers)—‘have one marke on the shoulders resembling the moone, growing and decreasing as she doth, sometimes showing a full compasse, and otherwhiles hollowed and pointed with tips like the hornes.’—Philemon Holland’s Pliny, b. viii. c. 17.

[14] Almander, or almandre, Chaucer’s word for almond-tree, Rom. Rose, 1363.

[15] In Calderon’s drama, the Soldier who liberates Segismund meets with even worse recompense than in the version below. I suppose some such saving clause against prosperous treason was necessary in the days of Philip IV., if not later.