The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria: A Drama of Early Christian RomeCalderón de la Barca, Pedro
Religion
The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria: A Drama of Early Christian Rome
Calderón de la Barca, Pedro
Christian martyrs -- Italy -- Rome -- Drama
The Autos of Calderon
were got ready by perhaps the most accomplished playwright that ever
lived, to amuse and stimulate a thronging southern population.
'Gerontius' is, we may perhaps say for Dr. Newman in the words of
Shelley,
'The voice of his own soul
Heard in the calm of thought';
whilst the conceptions of the Spanish dramatist burst into life with
tumultuous music, gorgeous scenery, and all the pomp and splendour of
the Catholic Church. No wonder therefore that our English Auto, though
composed with the same genuine purpose of using verse, and dramatic
verse, to promote a religious and even a theological end, should differ
from them in essence as well as in form. There is room however for both
kinds in the wide empire of Poetry, and though Dr. Newman himself would
be the first to cry shame upon me if I were to name him with Calderon
even for a moment, still his Mystery of this most unmysterious age will,
I believe, keep its honourable place in our English literature as an
impressive, an attractive, and an original production"--pp. 109, 115.
I may mention that the volume containing Belshazzar's Feast, and The
Divine Philothea, the Auto particularly referred to by Sir F. H. Doyle,
has been called Mysteries of Corpus Christi by the publisher. A not
inappropriate title, it would seem, from the last observations of the
distinguished Professor. A third Auto, The Sorceries of Sin, is given
in my Three Plays of Calderon, now on sale by Mr. B. Quaritch, 15
Piccadilly, London. The Divine Philothea, The Sorceries of Sin, and
Belshazzar's Feast are the only Autos of Calderon that have ever been
translated either fully, or, with one exception, even partially into
English.
D. F. MAC-CARTHY.
74 Upper Gardiner Street, Dublin,
March 1, 1870.
* AUTOS SACRAMENTALES: THE DIVINE PHILOTHEA: BELSHAZZAR'S FEAST. Two
Autos, from the Spanish of Calderon. With a Commentary from the German
of Dr. Franz Lorinser. By Denis Florence Mac-Carthy, M.R.I.A. Dublin:
James Duffy, 15 Wellington Quay, and 22 Paternoster Row, London.
+ LECTURES DELIVERED BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD, 1868. By Sir F.
H. Doyle Bart., M.A., B.C L., Late Fellow of All Souls', Professor of
Poetry. London: Macmillan & Co., 1869.
THE TWO LOVERS OF HEAVEN.[1]
INTRODUCTION.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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