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.