SCENE V.—_Before the Prison in Zalamea. A Street in the centre.

_Enter on one side DON LOPE with Troops; at the other, before the Prison, Labourers, Constables, etc. armed: and afterward, CRESPO._

_Lope._ Soldiers, there is the prison where your captain lies. If he be not given up instantly at my last asking, set fire to the prison; and, if further resistance be made, to the whole town.

_Cres._ Friends and fellow-townsmen, there is the prison where lies a rascal capitally convicted—

_Lope._ They grow stronger and stronger. Forward, men, forward! (_As the Soldiers are about to advance, trumpets and shouts of ‘God save the King,’ within._)

_Lope._ The king!

_All._ The king!

_Enter KING PHILIP II. through centre Street, with Train, etc. Shouting, Trumpets, etc._

_King._ What is all this?

_Lope._ ’Tis well your Majesty came so suddenly, or you would have had one of your whole towns by way of bonfire on your progress.

_King._ What has happened?

_Lope._ The mayor of this place has had the impudence to seize a captain in your Majesty’s service, clap him in prison, and refuses to surrender him to me, his commander.

_King._ Where is this mayor?

_Cres._ Here, so please your Majesty.

_King._ Well, Mr. Mayor, what have you to offer in defence?

_Cres._ These papers, my Liege: in which this same captain is clearly proved guilty, on the evidence of his own soldiers, of carrying off and violating a maiden in a desolate place, and refusing her the satisfaction of marriage though peaceably entreated to it by her father with the endowment of all his substance.

_Lope._ This same mayor, my Liege, is the girl’s father.

_Cres._ What has that to do with it? If another man had come to me under like circumstances, should I not have done him like justice? To be sure. And therefore, why not do for my own daughter what I should do for another’s? Besides, I have just done justice against my own son for striking his captain; why should I be suspected of straining it in my daughter’s favour? But here is the process; let his Majesty see for himself if the case be made out. The witnesses are at hand too; and if they or any one can prove I have suborned any evidence, or any way acted with partiality to myself, or malice to the captain, let them come forward, and let my life pay for it instead of his.

_King_ (_after reading the papers_). I see not but the charge is substantiated: and ’tis indeed a heavy one. Is there any one here to deny these depositions? (_Silence._) But, be the crime proved, _you_ have no authority to judge or punish it. You must let the prisoner go.

_Cres._ You must send for him then, please your Majesty. In little towns like this, where public officers are few, the deliberative is forced sometimes to be the executive also.

_King._ What do you mean?

_Cres._ Your Majesty will see. (_The prison gates open, and the Captain is seen within, garrotted in a chair._)

_King._ And you have dared, sir!—

_Cres._ Your Majesty said the sentence was just; and what is well said cannot be ill done.

_King._ Could you not have left it for my imperial Court to execute?

_Cres._ All your Majesty’s justice is only one great body with many hands; if a thing be to be done, what matter by which? Or what matter erring in the inch, if one be right in the ell?

_King._ At least you might have beheaded him, as an officer and a gentleman.

_Cres._ Please your Majesty, we have so few Hidalgos hereabout, that our executioner is out of practice at beheading. And this, after all, depends on the dead gentleman’s taste; if he don’t complain, I don’t think any one else need for him.

_King._ Don Lope, the thing is done; and, if unusually, not unjustly—Come, order all your soldiers away with me toward Portugal; where I must be with all despatch. For you——(_to CRESPO_) what is your name?

_Cres._ Peter Crespo, please your Majesty.

_King._ Peter Crespo, then, I appoint you perpetual Mayor of Zalamea. And so farewell.

[_Exit with Train._

_Cres._ (_kneeling_). God save your Highness!

_Lope._ Friend Peter, his Highness came just in time.

_Cres._ For your captain, do you mean?

_Lope._ Come now—confess, wouldn’t it have been better to have given up the prisoner, who, at my instance, would have married your daughter, saved her reputation, and made her wife of an Hidalgo?

_Cres._ Thank you, Don Lope, she has chosen to enter a convent and be the bride of one who is no respecter of Hidalgos.

_Lope._ Well, well, you will at least give me up the other prisoners, I suppose?

_Cres._ Bring them out. (_JUAN, REBOLLEDO, CHISPA, brought out._)

_Lope._ Your son too!

_Cres._ Yes, ’twas he wounded his captain, and I must punish him.

_Lope._ Come, come, you have done enough—at least give _him_ up to his commander.

_Cres._ Eh? well, perhaps so; I’ll leave his punishment to you.

With which now this true story ends— Pardon its many errors, friends.

Mr. Ticknor thinks Calderon took the hint of this play from Lope de Vega’s ‘Wise Man at Home’; and he quotes (though without noticing this coincidence) a reply of Lope’s hero to some one advising him to assume upon his wealth, that is much of a piece with Crespo’s answer to Juan on a like score in the first act of this piece. Only that in Lope the answer _is_ an answer: which, as Juan says, in Calderon it is not; so likely to happen with a borrowed answer.

This is Mr. Ticknor’s version from the older play:

He that was born to live in humble state Makes but an awkward knight, do what you will. My father means to die as he has lived, The same plain collier that he always was; And I too must an honest ploughman die. ’Tis but a single step or up or down; For men there must be that will plough or dig, And when the vase has once been filled, be sure ’Twill always savour of what first it held.

I must observe of the beginning of Act III., that in this translation Isabel’s speech is intentionally reduced to prose, not only in measure of words, but in some degree of idea also. It would have been far easier to make at least verse of almost the most elevated and purely beautiful piece of Calderon’s poetry I know; a speech (the beginning of it) worthy of the Greek Antigone, which, after two Acts of homely talk, Calderon has put into his _Labradora’s_ mouth. This, admitting for all culmination of passion, and Spanish passion, must excuse my tempering it to the key in which (measure only kept) Calderon himself sets out.

BEWARE OF SMOOTH WATER

DRAMATIS PERSONÆ

DON ALONSO

DONNA CLARA ⎫ ⎬ _his Daughters._ DONNA EUGENIA ⎭

DON TORRIBIO _his Nephew._

MARI NUÑO ⎫ ⎪ BRIGIDA ⎬ _his Servants._ ⎪ OTAÑEZ ⎭

DON FELIX ⎫ ⎪ DON JUAN ⎬ _Gallants._ ⎪ DON PEDRO ⎭

HERNANDO _Don Felix’s Servant._