In 1598 he published his patriotic epic, the _Dragontea_, as well as a pastoral novel entitled the _Arcadia_, and in this same year he married Juana de Guardo, daughter of a wealthy but frugal man who had made a fortune by selling pork. Shakespeare was the son of a butcher, but the fact was not thrown in his teeth: Lope was less fortunate, and his second marriage was the subject of a derisive sonnet by Góngora. So far as can be judged, Lope’s marriage with Juana de Guardo was one of affection, and the reflections cast upon him were absolutely unjust. But the stage had him in its grip, and he could not break with his past, try as he might. He strove without ceasing to make a reputation in other fields of literature: a poem on St. Isidore, the patron-saint of Madrid, the _Hermosura de Angélica_ with a mass of supplementary sonnets, the prose romance entitled _El Peregrino en su patria_, the epic _Jerusalén conquistada_ written in emulation of Tasso—these diverse works were produced in rapid succession between 1599 and 1609. Meanwhile Lope had been enrolled as a Familiar of the Holy Office, but the vague terror attaching to this sinister post did not prevent an attack being made on his life in 1611. He may have enlisted in the ranks of the Inquisition from mixed motives; yet we cannot doubt that he was passing through a pietistic phase at this time, for between 1609 and 1611 he joined three religious confraternities. This was no blind, no hypocritical attempt to affect a virtue which he had not. He was even too regardless of appearances all his life long.