Note 377 — Chapter XVII
Reading edition
The underplot is slightly connected with the main story of Esther, by a proclamation of King Ahasuerus, calling before him all the fair maidens of his empire, which, coming to the ears of Silena, the shepherdess, she insists upon leaving her lover, Selvagio, and trying the fortune of her beauty at court. She fails, and on her return is rejected by Selvagio, but still maintains her coquettish spirit to the last, and goes off saying or singing, as gayly as if it were part of an old ballad,—
For the vulture that flies apart, I left my little bird’s nest; But still I can soften his heart, And soothe down his pride to rest.
The best parts of the play are the more religious; like Esther’s prayers in the first and last acts, and the ballad sung at the triumphant festival when Ahasuerus yields to her beauty; but the whole, like many other plays of the same sort, is intended, under the disguise of a sacred subject, to serve the purposes of the secular theatre.
Perhaps one of the most amusing instances of incongruity in Lope, and their number is not few, is to be found in the first jornada of the “Trabajos de Jacob,” where Joseph, at the moment he escapes from Potiphar’s wife, leaving his cloak in her possession, says in soliloquy,—
So mayest thou, woman-like, upon my cloak Thy vengeance wreak, as the bull wreaks his wrath Upon the cloak before him played; the man Meanwhile escaping safe.
Y assi haras en essa capa, Con venganza de muger, Lo que el toro suele hacer, Del hombre que se escapa.
Yet, absurd as the passage is for its incongruity, it may have been loudly applauded by an audience that thought much more of bull-fights than of the just rules of the drama.