PREFACE

The dramas of Victor Hugo are already ranked as classics by competent critics. In the combined splendor of his imagination, the brilliancy of his wit, and the versatility of his metrical accomplishments, he has not his peer in the literature of France. Of his dramas, *' Ruy Bias" is the most original in its conception and most remarkable for its dramatic power. Like Corneille, he went to the Spanish Court for the matériel of his masterpiece. But while Corneille took for his drama the heroic period of Spanish history, and the national hero, Victor Hugo, with a master's hand, has painted the age of Spain's deepest political degradation, when Spain had no heroes and her King, Charles H., called Charles the Bedevilled by his countrymen, died at the age of thirty-nine, a prematurely old man.

Of this drama, the English poet and critic Swinburne has said : " Never, since the death of Shakespeare, had there been so perfect and harmonious a fusion of the highest comedy with the deepest tragedy as in the five many-voiced, many-colored acts of ' Ruy Bias.' " The characters of this drama are creations, not abstractions. The penniless Spanish nobleman, who is well versed in all the scandals and intrigues of that profligate court ; who struts about in the stolen finery of the Duke of Alba ; who is the friend and counsellor of Matalobos, the notorious robber, yet scorns to enter into an intrigue ol revenge upon a woman even for the munificent reward of which he is in so great need, — this César de Bazan was a new character in the modern drama. Ruy Bias, too, the lackey, who, impelled by a great passion, masquerades as