Had Calderón always maintained this level, he would be classed with the first masters of all ages and all countries. His blood, his faith, his environment were limitations which prevented his becoming a world-poet; his majesty, his devout lyrism, his decorative fantasy suffice to place him in the foremost file of national poets. But he was not so national that foreign adaptors left him untouched: thus D'Ouville annexed the _Dama Duende_ under the title of _L'Esprit follet_, which reappears as Killigrew's _Parson's Wedding_; thus Dryden's _Evening's Love_ is Calderón done from Corneille's French; thus Wycherley's _Gentleman Dancing Master_ derives from _El Maestro de danzar_. Yet, though Calderón's plots may be conveyed, his substance cannot be denationalised, being, as he is, the sublimest Catholic poet, as Catholicism and poetry were understood by the Spaniards of the seventeenth century: a local genius of intensely local savour, exercising his dramatic in local forms. Archbishop Trench has suggested that in the three great theatres of the world the best period covers little more than a century, and he proves his thesis by a reference to dates. Æschylus was born B.C. 525, and Euripides died B.C. 406: Marlowe was born in 1564, and Shirley died in 1666: Lope was born in 1562, and Calderón died in 1681. With Calderón the heroic age of the Spanish theatre reached a splendid close. He chanced to outlive his Toledan contemporary, FRANCISCO DE ROJAS ZORRILLA (1607-? 1661), from whose _Traición busca el Castigo_ Le Sage has arranged his _Traître puni_, and Vanbrugh his _False Friend_. A courtly poet, and a Commander of the Order of Santiago, Rojas Zorrilla collaborated with fashionable writers like Vélez de Guevara, Mira de Amescua, and Calderón, of whom he is accounted a disciple, though his one great tragedy has real individual power. His two volumes of plays (1640, 1645) reveal him as a most ingenious dramatist, who carries the "point of honour" further than Calderón in his best known play, _Del Rey abajo ninguno_, a characteristically Spanish piece. García de Castañar, apparently a peasant living near Toledo, subscribes so generously to the funds for the expedition to Algeciras that King Alfonso XI. resolves to visit him in disguise. García gets wind of this, and receives his guests honourably, mistaking Mendo for Alfonso. Mendo conceives a passion for Blanca, García's wife, and is discovered by the husband at Blanca's door. As the King is inviolate for a subject, García resolves to slay Blanca, who escapes to court. García is summoned by the King, finds his mistake, settles matters by slaying Mendo in the palace, and explains to his sovereign (and his audience) that _none under the King_ can affront him with impunity. Rojas Zorrilla's style occasionally inclines to _culteranismo_; but this is an obvious concession to popular taste, his true manner being direct and energetic. His clever construction and witty dialogue are best