The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Edgar Allan Poe [1054]
The “Spanish Student” has an unfortunate beginning, in a most unpardonable, and yet to render the matter worse, in a most indispensable “Preface:”
The subject of the following play,” says Mr. L., “is taken in part from the beautiful play of Cervantes, La Gitanilla. To this source, however, I am indebted for the main incident only, the love of a Spanish student for a Gipsy girl, and the name of the heroine, Preciosa. I have not followed the story in any of its details. In Spain this subject has been twice handled dramatically, first by Juan Perez de Montalvan in La Gitanilla, and afterwards by Antonio de Solis y Rivadeneira in La Gitanilla de Madrid. The same subject has also been made use of by Thomas Middleton, an English dramatist of the seventeenth century. His play is called The Spanish Gipsy. The main plot is the same as in the Spanish pieces; but there runs through it a tragic underplot of the loves of Rodrigo and Dona Clara, which is taken from another tale of Cervantes, La Fuerza de la Sangre. The reader who is acquainted with La Gitanilla of Cervantes, and the plays of Montalvan, Solis, and Middleton, will perceive that my treatment of the subject differs entirely from theirs.
Now the autorial originality, properly considered, is threefold. There is, first, the originality of the general thesis, secondly, that of the several incidents or thoughts by which the thesis is developed, and thirdly, that of manner or tone, by which means alone an old subject, even when developed through hackneyed incidents or thoughts, may be made to produce a fully original effect — which, after all, is the end truly in view.
But originality, as it is one of the highest, is also one of the rarest of merits. In America it is especially and very remarkably rare: — this through causes sufficiently well understood. We are content perforce, therefore, as a general thing, with either of the lower branches of originality mentioned above, and would regard with high favor indeed any author who should supply the great desideratum in combining the three. Still the three should be combined; and from whom, if not from such men as Professor Longfellow — if not from those who occupy the chief niches in our Literary Temple — shall we expect the combination? But in the present instance, what has Professor Longfellow accomplished? Is he original at any one point? Is he original in respect to the first and most important of our three divisions? “The subject of the following play,” he says himself, “is taken in part from the beautiful play of Cervantes, ‘La Gitanilla.’ To this source, however, I am indebted for the main incident only, the love of the Spanish student for a Gipsy girl, and the name of the heroine, Preciosa.”
The italics are our own, and the italicized involve an obvious contradiction. We cannot understand how “the love of the Spanish student for the Gipsy girl” can be called an “incident,” or even a “main incident,” at all. In fact, this love — this discordant and therefore eventful or incidental love is the true thesis of the drama of Cervantes. It is this anomalous “love,” which originates the incidents by means of which itself, this “love,” the thesis, is developed. Having based his play, then, upon this “love,” we cannot admit his claim to originality upon our first count; nor has he any right to say that he has adopted his “subject” “in part.” It is clear that he has adopted it altogether. Nor would he have been entitled to claim originality of subject, even had he based his story upon any variety of love arising between parties naturally separated by prejudices of caste — such, for example, as those which divide the Brahmin from the Pariah, the Ammonite from the African, or even the Christian from the Jew. For here in its ultimate analysis, is the real thesis of the Spaniard. But when the drama is founded, not merely upon this general thesis, but upon this general thesis