clamour, the conflict of unforeseen intrigues suitable to unreflecting
spectators; perpetual flatteries addressed to an unextinguishable
national pride; the painting of passions dear to a people never tired of
admiring itself; the absolute sway of the point of honour; the
deification of revenge; the adoration of symbols; buffoonery and
burlesque, everywhere beloved of the multitude, but here never defiled
by obscenities, for this people has a sense of delicacy, and the
foundation of its character is nobility; lastly, the flow of proverbs
which at times escape from the _gracioso_" (the comic servant
domesticated in the Spanish drama by Lope)--"the commonplace literature
of those who possess no other."

Comedias de capa y espada.

Heroicas.

Comedias de santos.

Autos sacramentales.

Entremeses.

The plays of Lope, and those of the national Spanish drama in general,
are divided into classes which it is naturally not always easy, and
which there is no reason to suppose him always to have intended, to keep
distinct from one another. After in his early youth composing eclogues,
pastoral plays, and allegorical moralities in the old style, he began
his theatrical activity at Madrid about 1590, and the plays which he
thenceforth produced have been distributed under the following heads.
The _comedias_, all of which are in verse, include (1) the so-called _c.
de capa y espada_--not comedies proper, but dramas in which the
principal personages are taken from the class of society that wears
cloak and sword. Gallantry is their main theme, an interesting and
complicated, but well-constructed and perspicuous intrigue their chief
feature; and this is usually accompanied by an underplot in which the
_gracioso_ plays his part. Their titles are frequently taken from the
old proverbs or proverbial phrases of the people[52] upon the theme
suggested, by which the plays often (as G. H. Lewes admirably expresses
it) constitute a kind of gloss (_glosa_) in action. This is the
favourite species of the national Spanish theatre; and to the plots of
the plays belonging to it the drama of other nations owes a debt almost
incalculable in extent. (2) The _c. heroicas_ are distinguished by some
of their personages being of royal or very high rank, and by their
themes being often historical and largely[53] (though not
invariably[54]) taken from the national annals, or founded on
contemporary or recent events.[55] Hence they exhibit