[footnote] *In the library of the British Museum there is a fine copy
of this "Segunda Parte de Comedias de Don Pedro Calderon de la Barca"
Madrid, 1637. Mr. Ticknor mentions (1863) that he too had a copy of
this interesting volume.

Senor Hartzenbusch, in the edition of Calderon's "La Vida es Sueno",
already referred to (Madrid, 1872), prints the passages from Lope de
Vega's two dramas, but in neither of them, he justly remarks, can we
find anything that at all corresponds to this "grandioso caracter de
Segismundo."

The second drama in this volume, "The Wonderful Magician", is perhaps
better known to poetical students in England than even the first,
from the spirited fragment Shelley has left us in his "Scenes from
Calderon." The preoccupation of a subject by a great master throws
immense difficulties in the way of any one who ventures to follow in
the same path: but as Shelley allowed himself great licence in his
versification, and either from carelessness or an imperfect knowledge
of Spanish is occasionally unfaithful to the meaning of his author,
it may be hoped in my own version that strict fidelity both as to the
form as well as substance of the original may be some compensation
for the absence of those higher poetical harmonies to which many of
my readers will have been accustomed.

"El Magico Prodigioso" appeared for the first time in the same volume
as "La Vida es Sueno", prepared for publication in 1635 by Don Joseph
Calderon. The translation is comprised in the same number of lines
as the original, and all the preceding remarks on "Life is a Dream",
whether in reference to the period of the first publication of the
drama in Spain, or the principles I kept in view while attempting