is here out of order. Instead of standing second it should come fifth,
that is after _The Christian Captives_. The following note is taken
from the first edition.
_Note to_ Achilles in Scyros.—After I had begun this play I came by
chance on _Calderon’s_ play on the same subject, _El Monstruo de los
Jardines_. The monster is _Achilles_; the gardens the same. Excepting
an expression or two I found nothing that it suited me to use, and
I should not have recorded the circumstance, if it were not that
_Calderon’s_ play seemed to me to contain strong evidence that he had
read _The Tempest_. This observation cannot be new, but I have never
met with it; so I offer it to my readers, thinking it will interest
them as it did me.
_El Monstruo de los Jardines_ opens with a storm at sea, and shipwreck
of royal persons, similar as it is inferior to _Shakespeare’s_ (but
compare also the Devil’s shipwreck in the second act of _El magicio
prodigioso_, which may be read in _Shelley’s_ translation). _Stephano_
has his counterpart,
_Un cofrade de Baco, que ha salido, Por no hacerle traicion, del mar á
nado Pues el no beber agua le ha escapado,_
and the whole play is then on a supposed desert island, which turns
out to be strangely peopled. There is the monster _Achilles_, who in
many respects remembers _Caliban_, and is even addressed as _Señor
monstruo_: ’_Monsieur Monster_.’ There is _Thetis_, who is to her
nymphs as _Prospero_ to his spirits; with musical enchantments, and
voices in the air, and even a _fantastico bajél_. _Calderon_ has
moreover hit upon the same device of imitative fancy as tempted
_Dryden_ in like sad case, and pictured a man who had never seen a
woman. The island is wandered on by the prince and his suite, and one
of them says of it _Republica es entera_, &c. A curious reader might
find more than I have here noticed: but _Calderon_ is as far from
sympathy with _Shakespeare_, as he is from the Greek story, with his
drums and trumpets and _El gran Sofí_.
There is a passage in my _Achilles_ (_l. 518 and foll._) which is
copied from _Calderon_: but this is after _Muley’s_ well-known speech
in the _Principe Constante_ (see note to _The Christian Captives_);
which is quoted in most books on _Calderon_. In my short play, which
runs on without change of scene or necessary pause, I have had the
act and scene divisions indicated by greater and lesser spaces in the
printing.[A]