VI

Though it does not lie within the scope of the present edition to offer any commentary on the text of the play, it has seemed admissible, for the convenience of those who have not ready access to the Academy edition of Lope, to include here the following quotation cited by Menéndez y Pelayo in his introdutcion :

« Los novios de Hornachuelos, que él lloró por no llevarla, y ella por no ir con él. »

« Para declarar dos que en casándolos comienzan a desagradarse el uno del otro. Y para buscar éstos no es menester ir a Hornachuelos, que es un lugar de Extremadura, sino irse a los juzgados y audiencias, que allí se hallarán novios desta condicion porque en Hornachuelos vinieron dos a casar hijo y hija, sin que ellos se hubiesen visto, y desposados, en viéndose concibieron grande odio el uno del otro, por ser tan feos y tan mal acondicionados, que no se halló cosa que del uno agradase al otro. Y casados ya, quando el novio la avia de llevar, en lugar del plazer que suele aver en esto, comenzaron a llorar de gana ambos. Preguntado por qué, respondia el novio que no queria ir con ella, respondia ella que no queria ir con él, y así estavan conformes y differentes de un parecer, y muy contrarios de una misma voluntad, y muy apartados sin haber algun medio. >>

La Philosophia vulgar de Joan de Mal-Lara, vezino de Sevilla... Primera parte, que contiene mil refranes glosados. En la calle de la Sierpe. En casa de Hernando Diaz. Año 1568. Folio 103 vuelto.

In Menéndez y Pelayo's introduction the reader will find much other pertinent matter, especially as regards the supposedly historical material of the play.

THE AUTHOR

OF LA ESTRELLA

DE SEVILLA

The celebrated comedia La Estrella de Sevilla, attributed to Lope de Vega, is dramatically a masterpiece but it is very weak poetically, that is in its metre and diction. The fame of Lope de Vega rendered ascription to him tempting, while the vast number of his plays made it comparatively easy to add one more without great fear of immediate detection. So La Estrella de Sevilla came to bear the name of Lope de Vega Carpio on its title-page, and even as late as two or three years ago the name still clung to it legitimately' it appears on the inner title-page of Dr. Henry Thomas: edition, which was in type before M. Foulché-Delbosc's edition of a different text was published in 1920 (Revue Hispanique, t. XLVIII). Dr. Thomas' text is that of the separate edition (suelta) in the British Museum, of which two other copies are known at Madrid and Parma; a fourth was formerly in the library of Holland House but has disappeared. Dr. Thomas' edition is, strange to say, the first edition of the play with explanatory notes: La Estrella de Sevilla, formerly attributed to Lope de Vega. Edited, with introduction, notes and vocabulary, by H. Thomas, D. Litt. (Clarendon Press, 1923.) The notes are minute and of great value, while the text has been treated with scholarly care

"

THE AUTHOR OF LA ESTRELLA DE SEVILLA

297

and in one passage at least (Pedro for puerta) the original text has been restored. In this age of misprints we need not bear too hardly on either the editor or publishers for making Phalaris roast his victims in a brazen ball and giving four instead fo five lines to the quintilla. M. FoulchéDelbosc's text is that of an unique arrachement (fragment torn from a volume of plays) in his possession. This text not only lengthens the play from 2503 to 3029 lines but, although at the beginning it agrees with the suelta in attributing the play to Lope de Vega, it stultifies itself at the end through an important variant which revives very forcibly the question of authorship. Instead of

The importance of this variant is that no one can doubt which is the original reading. Even the author of this play, bad metrical poet as he was, would scarcely have written such a line as

Lope, dando a La Estrella.

Twenty-five years ago, in vol. IX (1899) of his edition of Lope de Vega, Menéndez y Pelayo pointed out that La Estrella de Sevilla was a perfect contrast to Lope's other plays in being well conceived but badly written (mejor

pensada que escrita). It was almost impossible that Lope de Vega, whose fluent verse might be careless but was not often rough, should have composed a whole play so unmusically. Moreover the author, as M. Foulché-Delbosc notices, makes a mistake which Lope would not have made he confuses the Golden Fleece with the golden apples of the Hesperides (1.935 : por mançanas passo a Colcos). Finally, the play is not included by Lope in his list in El Peregrino en su Patria. Nevertheless, until the fortunate Cardenio clue there was nothing to indicate any other author than Lope de Vega. Both M. Foulché-Delbosc and Mr, Thomas are of opinion that the author of the play belonged to the South of Spain: « Je n'ai pas encore réussi à identifier Cardenio. Je crois que l'on ne se trompera guère en pensant que le poète qui fait rimer Alteza avec empressa et ofensas avec venças appartient au midi de l'Espagne. » (La Estrella, 1920 ed., pp. 36-37.) « When «Cardenio » comes to be identified, it is fairly certain that he will prove to be from the south of Spain, probably from Seville. » (La Estrella, 1923 ed., p. VIII). In this conjecture they were certainly right. Cardenio was the poetical name of D. Pedro de Cárdenas y Angulo, and there can be no reasonable doubt that this D. Pedro de Cárdenas was the author of La Estrella de Sevilla. The play was written before April, 1617 (see M. Foulché-Delbosc's introduction to the 1920 edition, p. 34) and we know that Cárdenas was alive in 1622. He was a native of Córdoba, of which city he became Veinticuatro (Gallardo, Ensayo, vol. III, col. 1084) and a Knight of the Order of Santiago, and he died before 1645: Nicolás Antonio, Bibliotheca Hispana Nova, II, 178, says that his widow and children presented the MS. of his work De la Casa de Haro to D. Luis Mendoza de Haro in that year. Antonio also tells us that he was « disertus & curiosus antiquitatum » and wrote a treatise entitled Vida del Hermano Francisco de Santa Anna,