She's gone. Whoever could suppose a woma...

She's gone. Whoever could suppose a woman

so noble and so shrewd would own to loving

so suddenly? But maybe I'm mistaken.

And yet she's never said, as I remember:

"What matter that it's lost, if much more may be?"

More may be lost? She could mean, by the woman

of whom she spoke.... But surely that's dissembling;

that "other woman" must be she herself.

But no, the countess is too proud, too prudent,"

and such a love would cross her clear intention.

In Naples princes daily come to court her

whose slave I couldn't be; I'm in great danger.

Knowing I love Marcela, she's pretending,

to lead me on; and yet such fears are groundless.

Pretence could not produce such bashful blushing,

such trembling when she said: "More may be lost."

What rose, its petals opening like eyes,

has ever smiled, through crimson lips, to see

the tears of dawn, so radiantly as she,

suffused with scarlet, turned her eyes on me?

What pale-skinned apple ever burned so brightly?

What I have seen and heard, I must suppose,

unless I'm mad, too little to bespeak

true passion, yet too much to be pretence.

But wait, my thoughts, you fly too fast toward greatness,

toward loveliness; you know too well Diana

is peerless both in wisdom and in beauty.

Lope de Vega. The Dog in the Manger. Trans. Victor Dixon. Carleton Renaissance Plays in Translation. Ottawa, Dovehouse Editions, 1990. pp. 57.