Raptures apart, the _Numancia_ is Cervantes' best play. He has a grandiose subject: the siege of Numantia, and its capture by Scipio Africanus after fourteen years of resistance. On the Roman side were eighty thousand soldiers; the Spaniards numbered four thousand or less; and the victors entered the fallen city to find no soul alive. With scenes of valour is mingled the pathetic love-story of Morandro and Lyra. But, once again, Cervantes fails as a dramatic artist; one doubts if he knew what a plot was, what unity of conception meant. He has scenes and episodes of high excellence, but they are detached from the main composition, and produce all the bad effect of a portrait painted in different lights. Abstractions fill the stage—War, Sickness, Hunger, Spain, the river Duero. But the tirades of rhetoric are unsurpassed by anything from Cervantes' pen, and Marquino's scene with the corpse in the Second Act is pregnant with a suggestion of weirdness which Mr. Gibson has well conveyed:— Marquino. "_What! Dost not answer? Dost not live again, Or haply hast thou tasted death once more? Then will I quicken thee anew with pain, And for thy good the gift of speech restore. Since thou art one of us, do not disdain To speak and answer, as I now implore;... Ye spirits vile, it worketh not ye trust! But wait, for soon the enchanted water here Will show my will to be as strong and just As yours is treacherous and insincere. And though this flesh were turned to very dust, Yet being quickened by this lash austere, Which cuts with cruel rigour like a knife, It will regain a new though fleeting life. Thou rebel soul, seek now the home again Thou leftest empty these few hours ago._ The Body. _Restrain the fury of thy reckless pain; Suffice it, O Marquino, man of woe, What I do suffer in the realms obscure, Nor give me pangs more fearful to endure. Thou errest, if thou thinkest that I crave This painful, pinched, and narrow life I have, Which even now is ebbing fast away,... Since Death a second time, with bitter sway, Will triumph over me in life and soul, And gain a double palm, beyond control. For he and others of the dismal band, Who do thy bidding subject to thy spell, Are raging round and round, and waiting stand, Till I shall finish what I have to tell.... The Romans ne'er shall victory obtain O'er proud Numantia; still less shall she A glorious triumph o'er her foemen gain; 'Twixt friends and foes, both have to a degree, Think not that settled peace shall ever reign Where rage meets rage in strife eternally. The friendly hand, with homicidal knife, Will slay Numantia and will give her life._ [He hurls himself into the sepulchre, and says:— _I say no more, Marquino, time is fleet; The Fates will grant to me no more delay, And, though my words may seem to thee deceit, Thou'lt find at last the truth of what I say._"