Note 590 — Chapter XXII

The earliest of these fraudulent publications of Calderon’s plays that I have seen is in the very rare collection of “Comedias compuestas por Diferentes Autores,” Tom. XXV., Zaragoza, 1633, 4to, where is Calderon’s “Astrólogo Fingido,” given with a recklessness as to omissions and changes that is the more remarkable, because Escuer, who published the volume, makes great professions of his editorial care and faithfulness. (See f. 191. b.) In the larger collection of Comedias, in forty-eight volumes, begun in 1652, there are fifty-three plays attributed, in whole or in part, to Calderon, some of which are certainly not his, and all of them, so far as I have examined, scandalously corrupted in their text. All of them, too, were printed as early as 1679; that is, two years before Calderon’s death, and therefore before there was sufficient authority for publishing any one of them.