INTRODUCTION.
LOS Bandos de Verona Montescos y
Capeletes," has been bracketed by Shakespearian commentators with another
Spanish play, the "Castelvines y Monteses" of Lope de Vega, as illustrative
of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet; the author, Francisco
de Rojas y Zorrilla, has certainly to some extent availed
himself of the Italian tradition dramatized by Shakespeare, but has ignored the tragic aspect of the history of
the hapless lovers of Verona, whom he marries in the end,
and makes happy ever afterwards.
Rojas succeeded Lope de Vega as a writer for the stage; being in his thirtieth year, and one of the most popular dramatists of the day, when that distinguished "Phoenix of the geniuses" died. Rojas penned a mortuary sonnet of average merit on the occasion of Lope's decease.
I am inclined to think that English students of Shakespeare will scarcely value, as German commentators appear to do, this Spanish play; it is inferior in every way to the "Castelvines y Monteses" of Lope de Vega.
Los Bandos de Verona is printed in the second volume of Rojas' collected works, Madrid, 1680, and reprinted in one of the volumes of the "Biblioteca de Autores Españoles," Madrid, 1861.
A Spanish critic admits that Rojas was not free from that "culteranismo which characterized the age in which he wrote;" his works vary in style, in language, and in merit; certainly Los Bandos de Verona is not one of his best productions.
I have only translated at length such portions of this play as bear some reference to Shakespeare's tragedy, connecting the scenes so as to render the whole work intelligible to those who feel an interest in every scrap that in the slightest degree can claim to be illustrative of the great dramatist's work.
27, Queen's Gate, Kensington.
September, 1874