The prophecy is just being fulfilled, and the chief interest of Quevedo's prose treatises lies in their conceptismo—the flashy epigram, the pompous paradox, the strained antithesis, the hairsplitting and refining in and out of season. It was vain for Quevedo to edit Luis de León and Torre as a protest against Gongorism, for in his own practice he substituted one affectation for another.

The true and simpler Quevedo is to be sought elsewhere. His picaresque Historia de la Vida del Buscón, best known by its unauthorised title, El Gran Tacaño (The Prime Scoundrel), though not published till 1626, was probably written soon after 1608. Pablo, son of a barber and a loose woman, follows a rich schoolfellow to Alcalá, where he shines in every kind of devilry. Thence he passes into a gang of thieves, is imprisoned, lives as a sham cripple, an actor, a bravo, and finally—his author being weary of him—emigrates to America. There is no attempt at creating character, no vulgar obtrusion of Alemán's moralising tone: such amusement as the novel contains is afforded by the invention of heartless incident and the acrid rendering of villany. The harsh jeering, the intense brutality, the unsympathetic wit and art of the Buscón, make it one of the cleverest books in the world, as it is one of the cruellest and coarsest in its misanthropic enjoyment of baseness and pain. No less characteristic of Quevedo are his Sueños (Visions), printed in 1627. These fantastic pieces are really five in number, though most collections print seven or eight; for the Infierno Enmendado (Hell Reformed) is not a vision, but is rather a sequel to the Política de Dios; the Casa de Locos de Amor is probably the work of Quevedo's friend, Lorenzo van der Hammen; and the Fortuna con Seso was not written till 1635. Quevedo himself calls the Sueño de la Muerte (Vision of Death) the fifth and last of the series. Satire in Lucian's manner had already been introduced into Spanish literature by Valdés in the Diálogo de Mercurio y Carón, in the Crotalón (which most authorities ascribe to Cristóbal de Villalón), and in the Coloquio de los Perros. In witty observation and ridicule of whole sections of society, Quevedo almost vies with Cervantes, though his unfeeling cynicism gives his work an individual flavour. His lost poets are doomed to hear each other's verses for eternity, his statesmen jostle bandits, doctors and murderers end their careers as brethren, comic men dwell in an inferno apart lest their jokes should damp hell's fires,—grim jests which may be read in Roger L'Estrange's spirited amplification.

Quevedo's serious poems suffer from the conceptismo which disfigures his ambitious prose; his wit, his complete knowledge of low life, his mastery of language show to greater advantage in his picaroon ballads and exercises in lighter verse. His freedom of tone has brought upon him an undeserved reputation for obscenity; the fact being that lewd, timorous fellows have fathered their indecencies upon him. A passage from his Last Will of Don Quixote may be cited, as Mr. Gibson gives it, to illustrate his natural method:—

Overpraised and overblamed, Quevedo attempted too much. He had it in him to be a poet, or a theologian, or a stoic philosopher, or a critic, or a satirist, or a statesman: he insisted on being all of these together, and he has paid the penalty. Though he never fails ignominiously, he rarely achieves a genuine success, and the bulk of his writing is now neglected because of its local and ephemeral interest. Yet he deserves honour as the most widely-gifted Spaniard of his time, as a strong and honest man in a corrupt age, and as a brilliant writer whose hatred of the commonplace beguiled him into adopting a dull innovation. It is not likely that his numerous inedited lyrics will do more than increase our knowledge of Góngora's and Montalbán's failings; but the two plays promised by Sr. Menéndez y Pelayo—Cómo ha de ser el Privado and Pero Vázquez de Escamilla—cannot but reveal a new aspect of a many-sided genius.

Quevedo was not, however, known as a dramatist to the same extent as the Valencian, Guillén de Castro y Bellvis (1569-1631), an erratic soldier who has achieved renown in and out of Spain. Castro is sometimes credited with the Prodigio de los Montes, whence Calderón derived his Mágico Prodigioso, but the Prodigio is almost certainly by Lope. Castro's fame rests on his Mocedades del Cid (The Cid's First Exploits), a dramatic adaptation of national tradition in Lope's manner. Ximena, daughter of Lozano, loves Rodrigo before the action begins, and, on Lozano's death by Rodrigo's hand, her passion and her duty are in conflict. Rodrigo's victories against the Moors help to expiate his crime: on a false rumour of his death, Ximena avows her love for him, and patriotism combines with inclination to yield a dramatic ending. Corneille, treating Castro's play with the freedom of a man of genius, founded the French school of tragedy; but not all his changes are improvements. By limiting the time of action he needlessly emphasises the difficulty of the situation. Castro's device is sounder when he prolongs the space which shall diminish Ximena's filial grief and increase her admiration of the Cid. The strife between love and honour exists already in the Spanish, and Corneille's merit lies in his suppression of Castro's superfluous third act, in his magnificent rhetoric, beside which the Spaniard's simplicity seems weak. But though Castro wrote no masterpiece, he begot one based upon his original conception, and some of Corneille's most admired tirades are but amplified translations.

Less remarkable as a playwright than as a novelist, the lawyer, Luis Vélez de Guevara (1570-1643); is reputed to have written no fewer than four hundred pieces for the stage. Of these, eighty survive, mostly on historic themes, which—as in El Valor no tiene Edad—are treated with tiresome extravagance; but the most difficult critics have found praise for Más pesa el Rey que la Sangre (King First, Blood Second). The story is that, in the thirteenth century, Guzmán the Good held Tarifa for King Sancho; the rebel Infante, Don Juan, called upon him to surrender under pain of his son's death; for answer, Guzmán threw his dagger over the battlement, and saw the boy murdered before his eyes. Rarely has the old Castilian tradition of loyalty to the King been presented with more picturesque force, and few scenes in any dramatic literature surpass that last one on the raising of the siege, when Guzmán points to his child's corpse. Vélez de Guevara collaborated with Rojas Zorrilla and Mira de Amescua in The Devil's Suit against the Priest of Madrilejos, a play in which a lunatic girl saves her life by pleading demoniacal possession. The idea is characteristic of Guevara's uncanny invention; but the Inquisition frowned upon stage representatives of exorcism, and, though the author's orthodoxy was not questioned, the play was withdrawn. He is best remembered for his satire El Diablo Cojuelo (1641), which describes observations taken during a flight through the air by a student who releases the Lame Devil from a flask, and is repaid by glimpses of life in courts and slums and stews. Le Sage, in his Diable Boiteux, has greatly improved upon the first conception; but the original is of excellent humour, and the style is as idiomatic as the best Castilian can be. Felipe IV. is said to have smiled only three times in his life—twice at quips by Guevara, who was his chamberlain.

Of all Lope's imitators the most undisguised is the son of the King's bookseller, Doctor Juan Pérez de Montalbán (1602-38), who became a priest of the Congregation of St. Peter in 1625. His father was plain Juan Pérez (as who should say John Smith), and the son was cruelly bantered for his airs and graces:—"Put Doctor in front and Montalbán behind, and plebeian Pérez shines an aristocrat." It was rumoured that his Orfeo (1624), written to compete with Jáuregui, was really Lope's work, given by the patriarch to start his favourite in life. The story is probably false, for the verse lacks Lope's ease and grace; but the Orfeo won Montalbán a name, and—there is no such luck for modern minor poets—in 1625 a Peruvian merchant expressed his admiration by settling a pension on the young priest. Montalbán lived in closest intimacy with Lope, who taught his young admirer stagecraft, and helped him with introductions to managers. Unluckily he sought to rival his master in fecundity as well as in method, and the effort broke him. He is often credited with writing the Tribunal of Just Vengeance, a work which describes Quevedo as "Master of Error, Doctor of Impudence, Licentiate of Buffoonery, Bachelor of Filth, Professor of Vice, and Archdevil of Mankind." Quevedo, on his side, had a grievance, inasmuch as Pérez, the bookseller, had pirated the Buscón. He prophesied that Montalbán would die a lunatic, and, in fact, his words came true.

Pellicer credits Montalbán with literary theories of his own, but they are mere repetitions of Lope's precepts in the Arte Nuevo. Like his master, Montalbán has a keen eye for a situation, for the dramatic value of a popular story, as he shows in his Amantes de Teruel, those eternal types of constancy; but he writes too hurriedly, with more ambition than power, is infected with culteranismo, and, though he apes Lope with superficial success in his secular plays, fails utterly when he attempts the sacred drama. His own age thought most highly of No hay Vida como la Honra, one of the first pieces to have a "run" on the Spanish stage; but the Amantes is his best work, and its vigorous dialogue may still be read with emotion.

These lovers of Teruel were also staged by a man of genius whose pseudonym has completely overshadowed his family name of Gabriel Téllez. The career of Tirso de Molina (1571-1648) is often dismissed in six lines packed with errors; but the publication of Sr. Cotarelo y Mori's study has made such summary treatment impossible in the future. Writers whose imagination does service for research have invented the fables that Tirso led a scandalous, stormy life, and that the repentant sinner took orders in middle age. These legends are baseless, and are conceived on the theory that Tirso's outspoken plays imply a deep knowledge of human nature's weak side and of the shadiest picaresque corners. It appears to be forgotten that Tirso spent years in the confessional: no bad position for the study of frailty. It seems certain that he was born at Madrid, and that he studied at Alcalá is clear from Matías de los Reyes' dedication of El Agravio agraviado. The date of his profession is not known; but he is named as a Mercedarian monk and as "a comic poet" by the actor-manager, Andrés de Claramonte y Corroy, in his Letanía moral, written before 1610, though not printed till 1613. His holograph of Santa Juana is dated in 1613 from Toledo, where he also wrote his Cigarrales. Passages in La Gallega Mari Hernández imply a residence in Galicia. That he lived in Seville, and visited the island of Santo Domingo, is certain, though the dates are not known. In 1619 he was Superior of the Mercedarian convent at Trujillo, an appointment which implies that he was a monk of long standing. In 1620 Lope dedicated to him Lo Fingido verdadero, and in the same year Tirso returned the compliment by dedicating his Villana de Vallecas to Lope. Though he competed in 1622 at the Madrid feasts in honour of St. Isidore, he failed to receive even honourable mention. Ten years later he became official chronicler of his order, and showed his opinion of his predecessor, Alonso Remón—with whom he has been confounded, even by Cervantes—by rewriting Remón's history. In 1634 he was made Definidor General for Castile, and his name reappears as licenser of books, or in legal documents. He died on March 21, 1648, being then Prior at Soria, renowned as a preacher of most tranquil, virtuous life, the very opposite of what ignorant fancy has feigned of him. He is known to have written plays so recently as 1638, for the holograph of his Quinas de Portugal bears that date; but the preface to the Deleitar Aprovechado shows that his popularity was on the wane in 1635. His last years were given to writing a Genealogía del Conde de Sástago and the chronicle of the Mercedarian Order.

Tirso's earliest printed volume is his Cigarrales de Toledo (1621 or 1624), so called from a local Toledan word for a summer country-house set down in an orchard. The book is a collection of tales and verse, supposed to be recited during five days of festivity which have followed a wedding. Tirso, indeed, announces stories and verse which shall last twenty days; yet he breaks off at the fifth, announcing a Second Part, which never appeared. Critics profess to find in Tirso's tales some traces of Cervantes, who is praised in the text as the "Spanish Boccaccio": the influence of the Italian Boccaccio is far more obvious throughout, and—save for a tinge of Gongorism—Los Tres Maridos burlados might well pass as a splendid adaptation from the Decamerone. Still, even in the Cigarrales the born playwright asserts himself in Cómo han de ser los Amigos, in El Celoso prudente, and in one of Tirso's most brilliant pieces, El Vergonzoso en Palacio. A second collection entitled Deleitar Aprovechado (Business with Profit), issued in 1635, contains three pious tales of no great merit, and several autos, one of which—El Colmenero divino—is Tirso's best attempt at religious drama.

Essentially a dramatist, he is to be but partially studied in his theatre, of which the first part appeared in 1627, the third in 1634, the second and fourth in 1635, and the fifth in 1637. A famous play is the Condenado por Desconfiado (The Doubter Damned), of which some would deprive Tirso; yet the treatment is specially characteristic of him. Paulo, who has left the world for a hermitage, prays for light as to his future salvation, dreams that his sins exceed his merits, and is urged by the devil to go to Naples to seek out Enrico, whose ending will be like his own. Paulo obeys, discovers Enrico to be a rook and bully, and in despair takes to a bandit's life. Meanwhile Enrico shows a hint of virtue by refusing to slay an old man whose appearance reminds the bully of his own father, and kills the master who taunted him with flinching from a bargain. He escapes to where Paulo and his gang are hidden. Garbed as a hermit, Paulo vainly exhorts Enrico to confess, though the criminal finally repents, and is seen by Pedrisco—Paulo's servant—passing to heaven. Duped by the devil, Paulo refuses to believe Pedrisco's story, and dies damned through his own distrust and pride. The substance of this play, which is contrived with abounding skill and theological knowledge, is the old conflict between free-will and predestination. Some would ascribe the play to Lope, because the pastoral scenes are in his manner, but the notion that Lope would publish under Tirso's name is untenable. Sr. Menéndez y Pelayo will not be suspected of a prejudice against Lope; and he avers, in so many words, that the only playwright in Spain with enough theology to write the Condenado was Tirso, who, had he written nothing else, would rank among the greatest Spanish dramatists.

The piece which has won Tirso immortality is his Burlador de Sevilla y Convidado de Piedra (The Seville Mocker and the Stone Guest), first printed at Barcelona in 1630 as the seventh of Twelve New Plays by Lope de Vega Carpio, and other Authors; and the omission of the Burlador from all authorised editions has led critics of authority to question Tirso's authorship.[27] The discovery in 1878 of a new version caused Manuel de la Revilla to declare that the play was by Calderón, on the ground that Calderón's name is on the title-page, and that Calderón never trespassed on other men's property. This is an overstatement: to mention but a few instances, Calderón's Á Secreto Agravio Secreta Venganza is re-arranged from Tirso's Celoso prudente; his Secreto á Voces from Tirso's Amar por Arte mayor, while the second act of Calderón's Cabellos de Absalón is lifted, almost word for word, from the third act of Tirso's Venganza de Tamar. On the whole, then, Tirso may be taken as the creator of Don Juan. No analysis is needed of a play with which Mozart, the most Athenian of musicians, has familiarised mankind; nor is translation possible in the present corrupt state of the text. Whether or not there existed an historic Don Juan at Plasencia or at Seville is doubtful, for folklorists have found the story as far away from Spain as Iceland is; but it is Tirso's glory to have so treated it that the world has accepted it as a purely Spanish conception. The Festin de Pierre (1659) by Dorimond, the Fils Criminel (1660) of De Villiers, the Dom Juan (1665) of Molière, the Nouveau Festin de Pierre (1670) of Rosimond, and the arrangement of Thomas Corneille, are but pale reflections of the Spanish type which passes onward from Shadwell's Libertine (1676) till it reaches the hands of Byron and Zorrilla and Barbey d'Aurévilly and Flaubert (whose posthumous sketch comes closer back to the original). Of these later artists not one has succeeded in matching the patrician dignity, the infernal, iniquitous valour of the original. To have created a universal type, to have imposed a character upon the world, to have outlived all rivalry, to have achieved in words what Mozart alone has expressed in music, is to rank among the great creators of all time.

If Tirso excelled in sombre force, he was likewise a master in the lighter comedy of El Vergonzoso en Palacio, where Mireno, the Shy Man at Court, is rendered with rare sympathetic delicacy, and in the farcical intrigue of Don Gil de las Calzas verdes (Don Gil of the Green Breeches), where the changes of Juana to Elvira or to Don Gil are such examples of subtle, gay ingenuity as delight and bewilder the reader no less than the comic trio of the Villana de Vallecas, or the picture of unctuous hypocrisy in Marta la piadosa. Tirso's fate was to be forgotten, not merely by the public, but by the very dramatists who used his themes; and, as in Lope's case, the neglect is partly due to the rarity of his editions. Yet, even so, his eclipse is unaccountable, for his various gifts are hard to match in any literature. He has not the disconcerting cleverness of Lope, nor has he Lope's infinite variety of resource; moreover, his natural frankness has won him a name for indecency. Yet has he imagination, passion, individual vision, knowledge of dramatic effect. He could create character, and his women, if less noble, are more real than Lope's own in their frank emotion and seductive abandonment. At whiles his diction tends to Gongorism, as when—in El Amor y la Amistad—a personage, at sight of a mountain, babbles of "the lofty daring of the snow, the pyramid of diamond"; but this is exceptional, and his hostility to culteranismo inspired Góngora to write more than one stinging epigram. Tirso had not Lope's matchless facility, and, considering the maturity of the Spanish genius, it is strange that he should have written no play before 1606 or 1608. Moreover, he composed by fits and starts in moments snatched from duty, and, beginning late, he ended early. Even in these circumstances he could boast in 1621 that he had produced three hundred plays—a number afterwards raised to four hundred. Only some eighty survive: in other words, four-fifths of his theatre has vanished, and the loss is surely great for those who would fain know every aspect of his genius. But enough remains to justify his high position, and his fame, like Lope's, grows from day to day.

Of such dramatists as the courtly Antonio Hurtado de Mendoza (? 1590-1644), and the festive Luis Belmonte y Bermúdez (1587-? 1650) mere mention must suffice: the former's Querer por sólo querer may be read in an excellent version made by Sir Richard Fanshawe during his imprisonment "by Oliver, after the Battail of Worcester." Antonio Mira de Amescua (? 1578-1640), chaplain of Felipe IV., mingled the human with the divine, was praised by all contemporaries from Cervantes onwards, had the right lyrical note, and, if his plays were collected, might prove himself worthy of his dramatic fame; as it is, he is best known as a playwright from whom Calderón, Moreto, and Corneille have borrowed themes. A more original talent is shown by Juan Ruiz de Alarcón (? 1581-1639), whose father was administrator of the Tlacho mines in Mexico. Ruiz de Alarcón left Mexico for Spain in 1600, and studied at Salamanca for five years; he returned to America in 1608 in the hope of being elected to a University chair, but the deformity—a hunched back—with which he was taunted his life long was against him, and he made for Spain in 1611. He entered the household of the Marqués de Salinas, wrote some laudatory décimas for the Desengaño de la Fortuna in 1612, and next year produced his first play, the Semejante de sí mismo, founded, like Tirso's Celosa de sí misma, on the Curious Impertinent. It was no great success, but it made him known and hated. He was far too ready to attack others, being himself most vulnerable. Cristóbal Suárez de Figueroa, who had jeered at Cervantes for "writing prologues and dedications when at death's door," spoke for others besides himself when he lampooned Alarcón as "an ape in man's guise, an impudent hunchback, a ludicrous deformity." Tirso befriended the Mexican, while Mendoza, Lope, Quevedo, and the rest scourged him mercilessly; and when his Antecristo (which Voltaire used in Mahomet) was played, a band of rioters ruined the performance by squirting oil on the spectators and firing squibs in the pit. Yet the women always crowded the house when his name was in the bill, and they made his fortune by contriving that his play, Siempre ayuda la Verdad—probably written in collaboration with Tirso—should be given at court in 1623. Three years later he was named Member of Council for the Indies. His collected pieces were published in 1628 and 1634.

Ruiz de Alarcón was never popular in the sense that Lope and Calderón were popular; still, he had his successes, and no Spanish dramatist is better reading. Compared with his rivals he was sterile, for the total of his plays is less than thirty, even if we accept all the doubtful pieces ascribed to him. Lope excels him in invention, Tirso in force and fun, Calderón in charm; Ruiz de Alarcón is less intensely national than these, and the very individuality—the extrañeza—which Montalbán noted with perplexity, makes him almost better appreciated abroad than at home. Corneille has based French tragedy upon Guillén de Castro's Mocedades del Cid; French comedy is scarcely less influenced by his adaptation of the Menteur from Ruiz de Alarcón's Verdad Sospechosa (Truth Suspected). García has lied all his life, lies to his father, his friends, his betrothed, lies to himself, and defeats his own purpose by his ingenuity. He would speak the truth if he could, but he has no talent that way. Why trouble with truth when lying comes easier? His father, Beltrán, perceives that the miser enjoys money, that murder slakes vengeance, that the drunkard grows glorious with wine; but his son's failing is beyond him. The noble Philistine has not the artist's soul, and cannot understand why García should lie for lying's sake, against his own interest. Throughout the play Ruiz de Alarcón is never once at fault, and the gay ingenuity with which he enforces the old moral, that honesty is the best policy, is equalled by his masterly creation of character. Ethics are his preoccupation; yet, though almost all his plays seek to enforce a lesson, he nowhere descends to pulpiteering or merges the dramatist in the teacher. While in Las Paredes Oyen (Walls have Ears) and in El Examen de Maridos (Husbands Proved) the triumph of the Verdad Sospechosa is repeated, the more national play is admirably exampled in El Tejedor de Segovia (The Weaver of Segovia) and Ganar Amigos (How to Win Friends).

There are greater Spanish playwrights than Ruiz de Alarcón: there is none whose work is of such even excellence. In so early a piece as the Cueva de Salamanca, though there is manifest technical inexperience, the mere writing is almost as good as in La Verdad Sospechosa. The very infertility at which contemporaries mocked is balanced by equality of execution. Lope and Calderón have written better pieces, and many worse: no line that Ruiz de Alarcón published is unworthy of him. While his contemporaries were content to improvise at ease, he sat aloof, never joining in the race for money and applause, but filing with a scrupulous conscience to such effect that all his work endures. His chief titles to fame are his power of creating character and his high ethical aim. But he has other merits scarcely less rare: his versification is of extreme finish, and his spirited dialogue, free from any tinge of Gongorism, is a triumph of fine idiom over perverse influences which led men of greater natural endowment astray. His taste, indeed, is almost unerring, and it goes to form that sober dignity, that individual tone, that uncommon counterpoise of faculties which place him below—and a little apart from—the two or three best Spanish dramatists.

If there be an exotic element in the quality of Ruiz de Alarcón's distinction as in his frugal dramatic method, the españolismo of the land is incarnate in the genius of Pedro Calderón de la Barca Henao de la Barreda y Riaño (1600-1681), the most representative Spaniard of the seventeenth century. His father was Secretary to the Treasury, and, on this side, Calderón was a highlander, like Santillana, Lope, and Quevedo; he inherited a strain of Flemish blood through his mother, who claimed descent from the De Mons of Hainault. He was educated at the Jesuit Colegio Imperial in Madrid, and fond biographers declare that he studied civil and canon law at Salamanca; this is mere assertion, unsupported by any proof. Though he is said to have written a play, El Carro del Cielo, at thirteen, he was not very precocious for a Spaniard, his first authentic appearances being made at the Feast of St. Isidore in 1620 and 1622. On the latter occasion he won the third prize, and was praised by the good-natured Lope as one "who in his tender years earns the laurels which time commonly awards to grey hairs." His Boswell, Vera Tasis, reports that he served in Milan and Flanders from 1625 to 1635; but there must be an error of date, for in 1629 he is found at Madrid drawing his sword upon the actor, Pedro de Villegas, who had treacherously stabbed Calderón's brother, and who fled for sanctuary to the Trinitarian Church. The Gongorist preacher, Paravicino, referred to the matter in public; Calderón replied by scoffing at "sermons of Barbary," and was sent to gaol for insulting the cloth. Pellicer signals another outburst in 1640, when the dramatist whipped out his sword at rehearsal and came off second best. These are pleasing incidents in a career of sombre respectability, though one half fears that the second is fiction. In 1637 Calderón was promoted to the Order of Santiago, and in 1640 he served with his brother knights against the Catalan rebels, hastily finishing his Certamen de Amor y Celos (Strife of Love and Jealousy) so as to share in the campaign. He was sent to Madrid on some military mission in 1641; received from the artillery fund a monthly pension of thirty gold crowns; was ordained priest in 1651; was made chaplain of the New Kings at Toledo in 1653; became honorary chaplain to Felipe IV. in 1663, when he joined the Congregation of St. Peter, which elected him its Superior in 1666. On taking orders, Calderón's intention was to forsake the secular stage, but he yielded to the King's command, and, so late as 1680, celebrated Carlos II.'s wedding with Marie Louise de Bourbon. "He died singing, as they say of the swan," wrote Solís to Alonso Carnero. When death took him he was busied with an auto, which was finished by Melchor de León—a fit ending to a happy, blameless life.

Calderón's prose writings are small in volume and in importance. The description (written under the name of his colleague, Lorenzo Ramírez de Prado) of the entry into Madrid of Felipe IV.'s second queen is an official performance. More interest attaches to a treatise on the dignity of painting, first printed in the fourth volume of Francisco Mariano Nifo's Cajón de Sastre literato (1781):—"Painting," says Calderón, "is the art of arts, dominating all others and using them as handmaids." He had an admirable gift of appreciation, and he proves it by rescuing from the oblivion of the Cancionero General such a ballad as Escribá's, which he quotes in Manos Blancas no ofenden, and again in El Mayor Monstruo de los Celos. Churton's version of the song is not unhappy:—

A great lyric poet, his lyrics are mostly included in his plays. One ballad, supposed to be a description of himself, written at a lady's request, is often quoted, and has been well Englished by Mr. Norman MacColl; it is, however, unauthentic, being due to a Sevillan contemporary, Carlos Cepeda y Guzmán.[28] The earliest play printed with Calderón's name is El Astrólogo fingido (1632), and from 1633 onwards collected editions of his works were published; but he had no personal concern in these issues, which so presented him that, as he protested, he could not recognise himself. Though he printed a volume of autos in 1676, he was so indifferent as to the fate of his secular plays that he never troubled to collect them. Luckily, in 1680 he drew up a list of his pieces for the Duque de Veragua, the descendant of Columbus, and upon this foundation Vera Tasis constructed a posthumous edition in nine volumes. Roughly speaking, we possess one hundred and twenty formal plays, and some seventy autos, with a few entremeses of no great account.

Calderón has been fortunate in death as in life; for though his vogue never quite equalled that of his great predecessor, Lope, it proved far more enduring. From Lope's death to the close of the seventeenth century, Calderón was chief of the Spanish stage; and, though he underwent a temporary eclipse in the eighteenth century, his sovereignty was restored in the nineteenth by the enthusiasm of the German Romantics. He has suffered more than most from the indiscretion of admirers. When Sismondi pronounced him simply a clever playwright, "the poet of the Inquisition," he was no further from the truth than the extravagant Friedrich Schlegel, who proclaimed that "in this great and divine master the enigma of life is not merely expressed, but solved": thus placing him above Shakespeare, who (so raved the German) only stated life's riddle without attempting a solution. James the First once said to the ambassador whom Ben Jonson called "Old Æsop Gondomar":—"I know not how, but it seems to be the trade of a Spaniard to talk rodomontade." It was no less the trade of the German Romantic, who mistook lyrism for scenic presentation. Nor were the Germans alone in their enthusiasm. Shelley met with Calderón's ideal dramas, read them "with inexpressible wonder and delight," and was tempted "to throw over their perfect and glowing forms the grey veil of my own words." The famous speech of the Spirit replying, in the Mágico Prodigioso, to Cyprian's question, "Who art thou, and whence comest thou?" has become familiar to every reader of English literature:—

This "grey veil" serves but to heighten the noble poetic quality which turned a cooler head than Shelley's. Goethe was moved to tears, and, though towards the end he perceived the mischief wrought in Germany by the uncritical idolatry of Calderón, he never ceased to admire the only Spanish poet that he really knew. And in our time men like Schack and Schmidt have dedicated their lives to the propagation of the Calderonian gospel. Some part of the poet's fame is due to his translators, some also to the fact that for a long time there was no rival in the field. To the rest of Europe he has stood for Spain. Readers could not divine (and in default of editions they could not contrive to learn) that Calderón, great as he is, comes far short of Lope's freshness, force, and invention, far short of Tirso's creative power and impressive conception. But Spaniards know better than to give him the highest place among their dramatic gods. He is too brilliant to be set aside as a mere follower of Lope's, for he rises to heights of poetry which Lope never reached; yet it is simple history that he did but develop the seed which Lope planted. He made no attempt—and there he showed good judgment—to reform the Spanish drama; he was content to work upon the old ways, borrowing hints from his predecessors, and, in a lazy mood, incorporating entire scenes. If we are to believe Viguier and Philarète Chasles, he went so far as to annex Corneille's Heraclius (1647), and publish it in 1664 as En esta vida todo es verdad y todo es mentira (In this Life All's True and All's False); but, as he knew no French, the chances are that both plays derive from a common source—Mira de Amescua's Rueda de la fortuna (1614). In attempts to create character he almost always fails, and when he succeeds—as in El Alcalde de Zalamea—he succeeds by brilliantly retouching Lope's first sketch. Goethe hit Calderón's weak spot with the remark that his characters are as alike as bullets or leaden soldiers cast in the same mould; and the constant lyrical interruptions go to show that he knew his own strength. Others might match and overcome him as a playwright: there was none to approach him in such magnificent lyrism as he allots to Justina in El Mágico Prodigioso—to be quoted here in FitzGerald's rendering:—

Such songs as these are, perhaps, better to read than to hear, and Calderón is careful to supply a more popular interest. This he finds in three sentiments which are still most characteristic of the Spanish temperament: personal loyalty to the King, absolute devotion to the Church, and the "point of honour." Through good report and evil, Spain has held by the three principles which have made and undone her. These three sources of inspiration find their highest expression in the theatre of Calderón. A favourite with Felipe IV., a courtly poet, if ever one there were, he becomes the mouthpiece of a nation when he deifies the King in the Príncipe Constante, in La Banda y la Flor (The Scarf and the Flower), in Guárdate de la Agua mansa (Beware of Still Water), and in a score of plays. Ticknor speaks of "Calderón's flattery of the great": he overlooks the social condition implied in the title of Rojas Zorrilla's famous play, Del Rey abajo Ninguno (Nobody, under the King). A titular aristocracy, shorn of all power, counted for less than a foreigner can conceive in a land where half the population was noble, and the reverence which was centred on the person of the Lord's anointed evolved into a profound devotion, a fantastic passion as exaggerated as anything in Amadís. A Church which had inspired the seven-hundred-years' battle against the Moors, which had produced miracles of holiness and of genius like Santa Teresa and San Juan de la Cruz, which had stemmed the flood of the Reformation and rolled it back from the Pyrenees, was regarded as the one moral authority, the sole possible form of religion, and as the symbol of Latin unity under Spain's headship.

The "point of honour"—the vengeance wrought by husbands, fathers, and brothers in the cases of women found in dubious circumstances—is harder to explain, or, at least, to justify; yet even this was a perverted outcome of chivalresque ideals, very acceptable to men who esteemed life more cheaply than their neighbours. Calderón's treatment of such a situation may be followed in FitzGerald's version of El Pintor de su Deshonra. The husband, who has slain his wife and her lover, confronts her father and friends:—

Similar motives are used by Lope de Vega and Tirso de Molina, both priests and grey-beards; but the effect is more emphatic in Calderón, and so early as 1683 his "immorality" was severely censured on the occasion of Manuel de Guerra y Ribera's eulogistic aprobación. In this matter, as in most others, he is satisfied to follow and to exaggerate an existing convention. His heroes are untouched by Othello's sublime jealousy: they kill their victims in cold blood as something due to the self-respect of gentlemen placed in an absurd position. He rehandles the theme in Á Secreto Agravio Secreta Venganza and in El Médico de su Honra; but the right emotion is rarely felt by the reader, since Calderón himself is seldom fired by real passion, and writes his scene as a splendid exercise in literature.

His genius is most visible in his autos sacramentales, a dramatic form peculiar to Spain. The word auto is first applied to any and every play; then, the meaning becoming narrower, an auto is a religious play, resembling the mediæval Mysteries (Gil Vicente's Auto de San Martinho is probably the earliest piece of this type). Finally, a far more special sense is developed, and an auto sacramental comes to mean a dramatised exposition of the Mystery of the Blessed Eucharist, to be played in the open on Corpus Christi Day. The Dutch traveller, Frans van Aarssens van Sommelsdijk, has left an account of the spectacle as he saw it when Calderón was in his prime. Borne in procession through the city, the Host was followed by sovereigns, courtiers, and the multitude, with artificial giants and pasteboard monsters—tarascas—at their head. Fifers, bandsmen, dancers of decorous measures accompanied the train to the cathedral. In the afternoon the assembly met in the public square, and the auto was played before the King, who sat beneath a canopy, the richer public, which lined the balconies, and the general, which filled the road. Even for an educated Protestant nothing is easier than to confound an auto sacramental with a comedia devota or a comedia de santos: thus Bouterwek, in his History, and Longfellow, in his Outre-Mer, have mistaken the Devoción de la Cruz for an auto. The distinction is radical. The true auto has no secondary interest, has no mundane personages: its one subject is the Eucharistic Mystery exposed by allegorical characters. Denis Florence M'Carthy's version of Los Encantos de la Culpa (The Sorceries of Sin) enables English readers to judge the genre for themselves:—