antiquity, the victories of the Cross of Christ over all the fleshly and
spiritual wickednesses of the ancient heathen world. To this theme,
which is one almost undrawn upon in our Elizabethan drama,--Massinger's
Virgin Martyr is the only example I remember,--he returns continually,
and he has elaborated these plays with peculiar care. Of these The
Wonder-working Magician is most celebrated; but others, as The Joseph of
Women, The Two Lovers of Heaven, quite deserve to be placed on a level,
if not higher than it. A tender pathetic grace is shed over this last,
which gives it a peculiar charm. Then too he has occupied what one
might venture to call the region of sacred mythology, as in The Sibyl of
the East, in which the profound legends identifying the Cross of Calvary
and the Tree of Life are wrought up into a poem of surpassing
beauty".[2] An excellent German version of Los dos amantes del cielo is
to be found in the second volume of the "Spanisches Theater", by Schack,
whose important work on Dramatic Art and Literature in Spain, is still
untranslated into the language of that country,--a singular neglect,
when his later and less elaborate work, "Poesie and Kunst der Araber in
Spanien und Sicilien" (Berlin, 1865), has already found an excellent
Spanish interpreter in Don Juan Valera, two volumes of whose "Poesia y
Arte de los Arabes en Espana y Sicilia" (Madrid, 1868), I was fortunate
enough to meet with during a recent visit to Spain.

The story of SS. Chrysanthus and Daria (The Two Lovers of Heaven), whose
martyrdom took place at Rome A.D. 284, and whose festival occurs on the
25th of October, is to be found in a very abridged form in the "Legenda
Aurea" of Jacobus de Voragine, c. 152. The fullest account, and that
which Calderon had evidently before him when writing The Two Lovers of
Heaven, is given by Surius in his great work, "De Probatis Sanctorum
Vitis", October, p. 378. This history is referred to by Villegas at the
conclusion of his own condensed narrative in the following passage,