which is almost invariably quoted against the author. So, too, whenever _La Vida es sueño_ is mentioned, we are almost invariably told that, as though to prove that life is indeed a dream, ‘a Queen of Sweden expired in the theatre of Stockholm during its performance.’ This picturesque story does not seem to be true, and, at any rate, it adds no more to the interest of the play than the verbal blemishes take from it. The weak spot in the piece is the sudden collapse of Segismundo when sent back to the dungeon, but otherwise the conception is admirable in dignity and force. Many critics find these qualities in Calderón’s tragedies, and I perceive them in _Amar después de la muerte_. The scene in which Garcés describes how he murdered Doña Clara, and is interrupted by Don Álvaro with— ¿Fue Como ésta la puñalada?— is, as Sr. Menéndez y Pelayo says, worthy of Shakespeare; and it long ago reminded Trench of the scene in _Cymbeline_ where Iachimo’s confession— Whereupon— Methinks, I see him now— is interrupted by Posthumus with— Ay, so thou dost, Italian fiend! But, for some reason, _Amar después de la muerte_ is not among the most celebrated of Calderón’s tragic plays, and it is certainly not the most typical—not nearly so typical as _Á secreto agravio secreta venganza_, and two or three others. Here the note of genuine passion is almost always faint, and is sometimes wanting altogether. Othello murders Desdemona in a divine despair because he believes her guilty, and because he loves her: Calderón’s jealous heroes, with the exception of the Tetrarch in _El Mayor monstruo los celos_, commit murder as a social duty. In _Á secreto agravio secreta venganza_ Don Lope de Almeida, with his interminable soliloquies, ceases to be human, and becomes the incarnation of (what we now think to be) a silly conventional code of honour. Doña Leonor in this play is not so completely innocent in thought as Doña Mencía in _El Médico de su honra_; but Don Lope de Almeida murders the one, and Don Gutierre Alfonso Solís murders the other, with the same cold-blooded deliberation shown in _El Pintor de su deshonra_ by Don Juan de Roca, who has some apparent justification for killing Doña Serafina.