Note 594 — Chapter XXII

Vera Tassis tells us, indeed, in his Life of Calderon, that Calderon wrote a hundred saynetes, or short farces; about a hundred autos sacramentales; two hundred loas; and more than one hundred and twenty comedias. But he collected for his edition (Madrid, 1682-91, 9 tom., 4to) only the comedias mentioned in the text, and a few more, probably twelve, intended for an additional volume that never was printed. Nor do any more appear in the edition by Apontes, Madrid, 1760-63, 11 tom., 4to; nor in the more correct one published at Leipzig in 1827-30, 4 bände, 8vo, by J. J. Keil, an accomplished Spanish scholar of that city. It is probable, therefore, that their number will not hereafter be much increased. And yet we know the names of nine plays, recognized by Calderon himself, which are not in any of these collections; and Vera Tassis gives us the names of eight more, in which he says, Calderon, after the fashion of his time, wrote a single act. Some of these ought to be recovered. But though we should be curious to see any of them, we should be more curious, considering how happy Calderon is in many of his graciosos, to see some of the hundred saynetes Vera Tassis mentions, of which not one is known to be extant, though the titles of six or seven are given in Huerta’s catalogue. The autos, being the property of the city of Madrid, and annually represented, were not permitted to be printed for a long time. (Lara, Prólogo.) They were first published in 1717, in 6 volumes, 4to, and they fill the same number of volumes in the edition of Madrid, 1759-60, 4to. These, however, are all the editions of Calderon’s dramatic works, except a sort of counterfeit of that of Vera Tassis, printed at Madrid in 1726, and the selections and single plays printed from time to time both in Spain and in other countries. Two, however, have been undertaken lately in Spain, (1846), and one in Havana, (1840), but probably none of them will be finished. See notices of Calderon, by F. W. V. Schmidt, in the Wiener Jahrbücher der Literatur, Bände XVII., XVIII., and XIX., 1822, to which I am much indebted, and which deserve to be printed separately, and preserved.