rhapsody, and as such appeals to the spiritual perceptions of those who do not demand logical sequences or too severe adherence to factual realities. It treats of the Incarnate Christ in the guise of a beekeeper; his bees are human souls. Lucifer is introduced as "the devil of a bear" whose specialty it is to rob the hives of their honey for his own delectation. Apart from some shepherds and musicians, the characters in what the author calls a metaphor are Pleasure, a peasant, the World, and the Body. The indisposition of the Body to manual activity is very marked. The Bee is addressed by the Beekeeper as "my dear wife," and there are other mystical identifications in the effort to carry out the figure. The world, the flesh, and the devil are finally routed, and the faithful and laborious bees are saved and fed by the sacrament of the Host.

Whether or not one is impressed by these mystical metaphors, he may justly admire the persistence of the author in carrying through the figure he has chosen, and the beauties of thought and language that he has embodied in it. If mystical imagery of this type is an edifying form of spiritual instruction and can, without too much of a strain, be linked with more visible symbols of religious belief, then Tirso has achieved a success in this portion of his field as well as in the others.

Student life and questions of ecclesiastical preferment are the background of a very interesting drama called Choice Based on Worth. A poor farm laborer aspires to an education and to an ecclesiastical career that shall not stop short of the papal chair. The difficulties attending his university course are related, with unfavorable comment on the conduct of students. His devoted sister, who does everything possible to aid him, is very attractively presented. The picture of the humble mountain household is a charming one. The ambitious student becomes a Franciscan friar, finds a warm friend in the person of a nobleman, and also gains the favorable notice of a cardinal. There is a frank revelation of the envyings and jealousies that accompany the effort to attain to the highest places in the church. A vision reveals to the

friar that the church wishes him to become the chief shepherd of the flock and to occupy the papal chair. In the meantime he becomes head of his order, and his enforcement of strict discipline arouses opposition. The play ends with the coronation of the friar as pope.

Side by side with the main theme is the romance of the sisters of the peasant pope. Their beauty has won for them admirers of royal rank whose families resent the idea of the intrusion of peasant blood. In the end the sisters triumph over the obstacles encountered, and in their royal state they and their husbands witness the induction of their brother into the papacy. In each case merit receives its due reward.

Spanish critics agree in claiming for Tirso a unique place in dramatic literature because of his success in putting into striking dramatic form a theological problem not only of that time but of all the Christian ages. Menéndez y Pelayo, one of the greatest European scholars of our day, regards this effort as a supreme success not attained by any other dramatist in any literature. Certainly theological questions that were matters of partisan dispute seem ill suited to serve as material for a drama that would evoke popular approval. It required a genius of the first order to put into poetic form in a great English epic the problems concerning which he felt called upon "to justify the ways of God to man." In this the author has reached one of the highest pinnacles of dramatic art and has brought home vividly to "the man in the street" a great problem of human life and destiny. The story runs as follows: Paulo has given up the life of Naples to live as a hermit in a forest. His virtue has at bottom a tinge of pride and haughtiness. He imagines that he sees God as an angry judge, and is filled with terror and doubt as to his destiny. Repeatedly he demands to know whether after such great penance he is to be saved or not. Satan assumes the appearance of an angel and comes with a pretended message telling Paulo to go to Naples and seek out Enrico, son of Anareto, and to note his words and acts, because these two are to have the same destiny.

Paulo comes upon Enrico, whom he finds to be anything but a model of sanctity, his one redeeming trait being his tender affection for his crippled father. Enrico asserts that he is the worst man the world has seen, but he has confidence that he will ultimately be saved through the mercy of the Lord. Paulo puts aside his virtues and adopts a life of crime. He scorns repeated appeals from a shepherd to repent, although in a vision he sees the soul of Enrico taken by the angels to heaven from the scaffold on which Enrico has been hanged. Paulo dies in despair without accepting the divine mercy.

Menéndez Pidal, the learned Spanish scholar, infused a new meaning into this play by showing that the story originated in the Brahmanical books of India where it was used to illustrate the transmigration of souls. It then passed to Persian literature, and thence through Arabian and Hebrew legend into Spain. The critic finds that the approximate source of the tale as Tirso uses it, was a hermit's experience in Egypt in connection with the rise of Christian monasticism. As a portion of stories of lives of the saints, it was familiar to Spanish readers of Tirso's time. This tale is interwoven with that of a hermit who apostatized because he saw a notorious robber saved.

Thus far the literary history of this drama. But there is also a philosophical and theological side which seems unconscious of similar problems arising outside of biblical thought. For more than a generation during Tirso's life there had been going on in Spain an acrimonious debate between the Jesuit scholar Molina and the Dominican theologian Bañes, who took opposite sides on the intricate and difficult question of predestination and free-will in relation to individual salvation. The Dominican order followed the teachings of its great theologian, Thomas Aquinas, who upheld the massive system of thought enunciated by Saint Augustine, whose profound religious experience found satisfaction in the ideas of predestination as expressed in the epistles of the Apostle Paul. The Jesuits chose to side with the semi-Pelagian

teachings, which encouraged the idea that man might be in some sense his own savior. These naturally antagonistic ideas evoked the bitter struggle in which Tirso contributed his support to the Jesuit contentions. In his early connection with the Mercenarian order, of which he was now a shining light, he had taught three courses in theology during an official visitation to its monasteries in Santo Domingo. There is no evidence that he gave any such instruction after his return to Spain, but his interest in similar themes may be seen in several of his dramas. It has even been suggested that the celebrated character of Don Juan, the great figure presented in all its wickedness in Tirso's The Mocker of Seville, who failed to repent before his sudden death, is an instance of Tirso's embodiment in dramatic form of the mystery of evil and its relation to theological disputes.

There have been Spanish critics who have seen in this powerful drama an effort to offset the Protestant theology represented by Luther and Calvin. But Menéndez Pidal holds that it was not connected in any way with Protestantism, which had awakened no popular interest in Spain and had little following there, but was a controversy wholly within the Church, and connected with personalities in the two greatest orders within the Church. The drama is admittedly an ex parte statement of a controverted position and a piece of popular propaganda in behalf of one of the disputants. Whether these facts weaken in any degree the literary integrity or dramatic value of the performance may be left to professional critics. Tirso deserves all credit for dramatizing in masterly fashion an abstruse theological dogma.

The erudite master of Spanish critics, the late Menéndez y Pelayo, has set down his opinion that "the only playwright in Spain with theology enough to write The Doubter Damned was Tirso, who, had he written nothing else, would rank among the greatest Spanish dramatists." Another critic states that the whole Catholic world was intensely interested in the polemic carried on in Spain, of which this drama of Tirso's bears witness, and asserts that we feel led to smile

at the idea of a great poet finding inspiration for his drama in this polemic. But an age that had created the admirable religious drama of Spain might well offer us the strange. phenomenon of the abstruse theory of predestination bringing delight to a dramatic genius and inspiring in him a conception filled throughout with a theological meaning. And the most remarkable thing about it is that all its technical wealth is not something artificial that has been imposed upon it, but is something consubstantial with it. The same writer adds the interesting remark that

this dispute had absorbed the attention of three popes, had caused
the kings of Spain and France to intervene in the affair, had demanded
the erection of a special commission of the Church to deal with it, and
after the contention had been allayed by the pontifical imposition
of silence, the dispute broke out again in the following century in
the form of Jansenism. When it became known that the commission
appointed to decide the matter was unable to agree, the occasion was
celebrated by the Jesuits with public rejoicings, illuminations, music,
and bullfights. Is it in any way strange that the drama, which at that
time embraced the whole national life, should take part in such
displays?

ADVENTURERS

TORREY CONNOR

I touched hands with adventurers, today

One, bold of heart, who braves the blue sky-way;

Another from the lanes of seven seas;

One, desert-bound, who delves in mysteries

Of storied past.

Across the nursery floor,

My wee lad toddled to the open door.