Life's a Dream; The Great Theatre of the World

Book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1856. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER II. THE GENIUS OF CALDERON. (his Plays.) rpHEY convey altogether a wrong impression of Calderon, who, willing to exalt and glo- rify him the more, isolate him wholly from his age, who pass over all its other worthies to magnify him only, presenting him to us not as one, the brightest indeed in a galaxy of lights, but as the sole particular star in the firmament of Spanish dramatic art. Those who derive their impression from the Schlegels, especially from Augustus, would conclude him to stand thus alone;--to stand, if one might venture to em- ploy the allusion, a poetical Melchisedec, without spiritual father, without spiritual mother, with nothing round him to explain or account for the circumstances of his greatness. But there are no such appearances in literature; great artists, poets, or painters, or others, always cluster; the - conditions which produce one, produce many. They are not strewn at nearly equable distances through the life of a nation, but there are brief periods of great productiveness, with long intervals of comparative barrenness between; or it may be, as indeed was the case with Spain, the aloe tree of a nation's literature blossoms but once. And if this is true in other regions of art, above all will it be true in respect of the drama.* In this, when it deserves the name, a nation is uttering itself, what is nearest to its heart, what it has conceived there of life and life's mystery, and of a possible reconciliation between the world which now is and that ideal world after which it yearns; and the conditions of a people, which make a great outburst of the drama possible, make it also inevitable that this will utter itself not by a single voice but by many. Even Shakespeare himself, towering as he does immeasurably above all his compeers, is not a singl...