Page:Barlaam and Josaphat. English lives of Buddha.djvu/97

Rh of Calderon's most famous play La Vida es Sueño.

One of the French versions was even more prolific. Executed in prose in the thirteenth century, it got into Provençal and became the father of the numerous Italian offshoots which include a mediæval sacred drama, and another drama, not perhaps so sacred, by Pulci.

This First Latin version, as received into the Vitæ Sanctorum, was also taken up into two great mediaeval collections which thus helped to spread the Barlaam Legend and Parables. St. Vincent of Beauvais placed an abstract of it in his huge Encyclopaedia in the historical section (Speculum Historialæ, xv.). Another abstract was included by Jacobus de Voragine in his Golden Legend, whence it was utilised to form the subject of two French Miracle Plays, while the book itself got into English in Caxton's version, which we have repeated in this volume.

Besides the Caxton, there are no less than four mediæval English versions, which have