always conceived the parts of Shakspeare in the sense of the poet I should be inclined to doubt, from the very circumstances stated in the eulogies on his acting. He excited, however, a noble emulation to represent in a worthy manner the favourite poet of the nation; this has ever since been the highest object of the actors, and even at present they can boast of men whose histrionic talents are deservedly celebrated. But why has this revival of the admiration of Shakspeare remained unproductive for dramatic poetry? Because he has been too much the subject of astonishment, as an unapproachable genius who owed every thing to nature and nothing to art. His success, they think, is without example, and can never be repeated; nay, it is even forbidden to venture into the same region. Had they considered him more from the point of view which an artist ought to take, they would have endeavoured to understand the principles which he followed in his practice, and tried to become masters of them. A meteor appears, disappears, and leaves no trace behind; the course of a heavenly body, however, may be delineated by the astronomer, for the sake of investigating more accurately the laws of general mechanics. I am not sufficiently acquainted with the latest dramatic productions of the English, to enter into a minute account of them. That the dramatic art and the taste of the public are, however, in a wretched decline, I think I may safely infer, from the following phenomeSome years ago, several German plays found non. their way to the English stage; plays, which it is true, are with us the favourites of the multitude, but which are not considered by the intelligent as forming a part of our literature, and in which distinguished actors are almost ashamed of earning applause. These pieces have met with extraordinary favour in England; they have properly speaking, as the Italians say, fatto furore, though the critics did not fail to declaim against their immorality, veiled over by sentimental hypocrisy. From the poverty of our dramatic literature, the admission of such abortions into Germany may be easily comprehended; but what can be alleged in favour of this depravity of taste in a nation like the English, which possesses such treasures, and which must therefore descend from such an elevation? Certain writers are nothing in themselves; they are merely symptoms of the disease of their age; and were we to judge from them, there is but too much reason to fear that, in England, an effeminate sentimentality in private life is more frequent, than from the astonishing political greatness and energy of the nation we should be led to suppose. May the romantic drama and the grand historical drama, these truly native species, be again speedily revived, and may Shakspeare find such worthy imitators as some of those whom Germany has to produce! LECTURE XIV. Spanish Theatre.-Its three periods; Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Calderon.-Spirit of the Spanish poetry in general.-Influence of the national history on it.-Form, and various species of the Spanish drama. Decline since the beginning of the eighteenth century. THE riches of the Spanish stage have become proverbial, and it has been more or less the custom of the Italian French and English dramatists, to draw from this source, and generally without acknowledgment. I have often had occasion to remark this in the preceding lectures; it was incompatible, however, with my purpose, to give an enumeration of what has been so borrowed, which would indeed have assumed rather a bulky appearance, and which could not have been rendered complete without great labour. What has been taken from the most celebrated Spanish poets may be easily pointed out; but the writers of the second and third rank have been equally laid under contribution, and their works are not easily met with out of Spain. Ingenious boldness, joined to easy clearness of intrigue, is so exclusively peculiar to the Spanish dramatists, that I consider myself justified, whenever I find these in a work, to suspect a Spanish origin, even though the circumstance may have been unknown to the author himself, who drew his plagiarism from a nearer source. * From the political preponderance of Spain in the sixteenth century, the knowledge of the Spanish language became widely diffused throughout Europe. Even in the first half of the seventeenth century we find many traces of an acquaintance with the Spanish literature in France, Italy, England, and Germany; since that time, however, the study of it has become every where more and more neglected, till of late some zeal has again been excited for it in Germany. In France they have no other idea of the Spanish theatre, than that which they may form from the translations of Linguet. These have been again translated into German, and their number has been increased by others, in no respect better, derived immediately from the originals. The translators have, however, confined themselves almost exclusively to the department of comedies of intrigue, and though all the Spanish plays are versified, with the exception of a few Entremeses, Saynetes, and those of the latest period, they have reduced the whole to prose, and even considered themselves entitled to praise for having carefully removed every thing which may be called poetical ornament. In such a mode of proceeding nothing but * Thus for example, The Servant of two Masters, of Goldoni, a piece highly distinguished above his others for the most amusing intrigue, passes for an original. A learned Spaniard has assured me, that he knows it to be a Spanish invention. Perhaps, Goldoni had here merely an older Italian imitation before him. the material scaffolding of the original work could remain; the beautiful colouring must have disappeared with the forms of the execution. That translators who could show such a total want of judgment in poetical excellences would not choose the best pieces in the whole store, may be easily supposed. The species in question, though the invention of innumerable intrigues, of a description of which we find but few examples in the theatrical literatures of other countries, certainly shows an astonishing acuteness, is yet by no means the most valuable part of the Spanish theatre, which displays a much greater brilliancy in the handling of wonderful, mythological, or historical subjects. The selection published by De la Huerta in sixteen small volumes, under the title of Teatro Hespanol, with introductions giving an account of the authors of the pieces and the different species, can afford no very extensive acquaintance with the Spanish theatre, even to a person possessed of the language; for his collection is almost exclusively limited to the department of comedies in modern manners, and he has admitted no pieces of the earlier period, composed by Lope de Vega or his predecessors. Blankenburg and Bouterweck* among us have laboured to throw light on the earlier history of the Spanish theatre, before it acquired its proper shape and attained literary dignity, a subject in *The former in his annotations on Sulzers Theorie der schönen Künste, the latter in his Geschichte der Spanischen Poesie. |