paralleled in quantity--for in fertility also Lope was but the first
among many. Among the writers of Lope's school, his friend G. de Castro
(1569-1631) must not be passed by, for his _Cid_[57] was the basis of
Corneille's; nor J. P. de Montalban, "the first-born of Lope's genius,"
the extravagance of whose imagination, like that of Lee, culminated in
madness. Soon after him died (1639) Juan Ruiz de Alarcon, in whose
plays, as contrasted with those of Lope, has been recognized the
distinctive element of a moral purpose. To G. Tellez, called Tirso de
Molina (d. 1648), no similar praise seems due; but the frivolous gaiety
of the inventor of the complete character of Don Juan was accompanied by
ingenuity in the construction of his excellent[58] though at times
"sensational"[59] plots. F. de Rojas Zorrilla (b. 1607), who was largely
plundered by the French dramatists of the latter half of the century,
survived Molina for about a generation. In vain scholars of strictly
classical tastes protested in essays in prose and verse against the
ascendancy of the popular drama; the prohibition of Philip II. had been
recalled two years after his death and was never renewed; and the
activity of the theatre spread through the towns and villages of the
land, everywhere under the controlling influence of the school of
writers who had established so complete a harmony between the drama and
the tastes and tendencies of the people.

Calderon.

The glories of Spanish dramatic literature reached their height in P.
Calderon de la Barca, though in the history of the Spanish theatre he
holds only the second place. He elaborated some of the forms of the
national drama, but brought about no changes of moment in any of them.
Even the brilliancy of his style, glittering with a constant
reproduction of the same family of tropes, and the variety of his
melodious versification, are mere intensifications of the poetic
qualities of Lope, while in their moral and religious sentiments, and
their general views of history and society, there is no difference
between the two. Like Lope, Calderon was a soldier in his youth and an
ecclesiastic in his later years; like his senior, he suited himself to
the tastes of both court and people, and applied his genius with equal
facility to the treatment of religious and of secular themes. In
fertility Calderon was inferior to Lope (for he wrote not many more than
100 plays); but he surpasses the elder poet in richne