d his
wife to receive the stranger. She and the lover contracted an enduring
relation. Cardinal Bibbiena wrote a comedy at the beginning of the
sixteenth century, _Calandra_, which was esteemed as a great work. The
intrigue consists of _quiproquos_ produced by twins, a male and a
female, who exchange dress. Many classical stories are introduced. Lope
de Vega (1562-1635) wrote autos and comedies. He wrote eighteen hundred
comedies, four hundred autos, and a great number of other pieces,--in
all, it is said, twenty-one million verses.[2114] Calderon (1600-1681)
continued on the same lines. The servant-buffoon was the time form of
the buffoon. All these productions furnished models and material for the
poets and dramatists of other countries. The comedies are always long
and wordy and generally tedious. They run in fixed molds, and have
unyielding conventions to obey. Rarely have they ethological value.

+659. Romances of roguery.+ The "romances of roguery" were closely akin
to the popular drama as exponents of popular tastes and standards. It is
very possible that the romances were derived from the tastes.[2115] The
clever hero has been a very popular type in all ages and countries. He
easily degenerates into the clever rogue. The rogue is an anti-hero to
offset the epic hero. There was in France, in the thirteenth century, "a
bold rogue, Eustache le Moine, who became the central hero of a _roman_,
which set forth his life and deeds as thief and pirate."[2116] In
Germany Till Eulenspiegel was a rascal who lived in the first part of
the fourteenth century and around whose name anecdotes clustered until
he became an anti-hero. There were in Germany popular tales which were
picaresque novels in embryo. Those about Eulenspiegel were first reduced
to a coherent narrative in 1519. Hemmerlein was an ugly and sarcastic
buffoon of the fourteenth century. Hanswurst was a fat glutton of the
fifteenth century who aimed to be clever but made blunders.
Pickelhering, in Holland, was of the same type.[2117] In England, in the
sixteenth century, Punch began to degenerate. He took away the role of
"Old Vice," and became more and more depraved,--a popular Don Juan, a
type of physical and moral deformity.[2118] The play was popular. The
marionettes, being only dolls and sexless, escaped the onslaught of the
Puritans.[2119]

+660. Picaresque novels.+ The picaresque novels do not deal with love,
but with intrigues for material gain in the wid