upon what germs of good existed in Torres Naharro, Rueda, and Cueva; but his debt to them was small, and he would have found his way without them. Without Lope we should have had no Tirso, no Calderón.[23] Producing as he produced, much of his work may be considered as improvisation; even so, he takes place as the first improvisatore in the world, and compels recognition as, so to say, "a natural force let loose." He imagined on a Napoleonic scale; he contrived incident with such ease and force and persuasiveness as make the most of his followers seem poor indeed; and his ingenuity of diversion is miraculously fresh after nearly three hundred years. His gift never fails him, whether he deal with historical tragedy, with the heroic legend, with the presentation of picaresque life, or with the play of intrigue and manners—the _comedia de capa y espada_. This last, "the cloak and sword play" is as much his personal invention as is the _gracioso_—the comic character—as is the _enredo_—the maze of plot—as is the "point of honour," as is the feminine interest in his best work. Hitherto the woman had been allotted a secondary, an incidental part, ludicrous in the _entremés_, sentimental in the set piece. Lope, the expert in gallantry, in manners, in observation, placed her in her true setting, as an ideal, as the mainspring of dramatic motive and of chivalrous conduct. He professed an abstract approval of the classic models; but his natural impulse was too strong for him. An imitator he could not be, save in so far as he, in his own phrase, "imitated men's actions, and reproduced the manners of the age." He laid down rules which in practice he flouted; for he realised that the business of the scene is to hold an audience, is to interest, to surprise, to move. He could not thump a pulpit in an empty hall: he perceived that a play which fails to attract is—for the playwright's purpose—a bad play. He can be read with infinite pleasure; yet he rarely attempted drama for the closet. Emotion in action was his aim, and he achieved it with a certainty which places him among the greatest gods of the stage.