Being awake in the
morning, he began to remember what had happened before; he knewe not
whether it were true indeede, or a dream that had troubled his
braine. But in the end, after many discourses, he concludes that ALL
WAS BUT A DREAME that had happened unto him; and so entertained his
wife, his children, and his neighbours, without any other
apprehension."
It is curious to find that the same anecdote which formed the
Induction to the original "Taming of a Shrew", and which, from a
comic point of view, Shakespeare so wonderfully developed in his own
comedy, Calderon invested with such solemn and sublime dignity in "La
Vida es Sueno". He found it, as Senor Hartzenbusch points out in the
edition of 1872 already quoted, in the very amusing "Viage
Entretenido" of Augustin de Rojas, which was first published in 1603.
Hartzenbusch refers to the modern edition of Rojas, Madrid, 1793,
tomo I, pp. 261, 262, 263, but in a copy of the Lerida edition of
1615, in my own possession, I find the anecdote at folios 118, 119,
120. There are some slight differences between the version of Rojas
and that of Goulart, but the incidents and the persons are the same.
The conclusion to which the artizan arrived at, in the version of
Goulart, that all had been a dream, is expressed more strongly by the
Duke himself in the story as told by Rojas.
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