It is, too, as it seems to me, remarkably successful . . .

"Nothing, I think, in the English language will give us so true an
impression of what is most characteristic of the Spanish drama: perhaps
I ought to say, of what is most characteristic of Spanish poetry
generally".--tom. iii. pp. 461, 462.

BERNARD QUARITCH, 15 PICCADILLY, LONDON.

Transcriber's Notes.

General. I have rendered instances of small capitals as all capitals.
In most instances I have made no attempt to indicate here instances of
italics in the original publication. Accents and other diacritical
marks have also been dropt. However, where the original has an acute
accent over the "e" in a past participle for poetical reasons, I have
marked this with a grave accent (as in "learn`ed") to indicate the
intended pronunciation. For a fully formatted version, with italics,
extended characters, et cetera, please refer to the HTML version of
this play, released by Project Gutenberg simultaneously with this plain
text edition.

General. Only the most obvious of printer's errors have been corrected
in this electronic edition. Some inconsistent use of quotation marks
and several forms of ellipses (with varying numbers of dots and spaces)
have been retained as originally published. I have also retained the
original's format of contractions, namely to include a space as in
"I 'll" rather than "I'll."

Play, General. Stage directions following lines of spoken text are
typically right justified in the printed source. In this electronic
edition they simply follow the line of spoken text.

Play, General. In a few places, Denis Florence MacCarthy's (1817-1882)
translation as published differs noticeably from a Spanish (or more
properly, Castillano) text of the drama, published after this
translation, available to this transcriber. I do not have access to the
Spanish edition that Mr. MacCarthy used as the basis of his translation,
so perhaps a better preserved version of Pedro Calderon de la Barca's
(1600-1681) drama was discovered. Or perhaps Mr. MacCarthy used some
poetic license in editing the drama. Some differences may be due to
printer's errors. Whatever the reason, I have noted below these
differences so that a reader comparing this e-book to a Spanish edition
will not be confused about these omission, and think them caused by a
transcription error of mine, or pages missing from the printed source.

Act 1, Scene 2. Ovid's 'Remed