This may seem very much as though we were shown a few stones from the Coliseum, and invited on the strength of them to form an idea of Rome. It is no doubt but too likely that among the 1369 lost plays there may have been some real masterpieces (in literature the best does not always survive); but it is inconceivable that only the failures have been saved, and, as the collected pieces range from a play written when Lope was twelve to another written shortly before his death, we have the privilege of observing every phase of his stupendous exploit. That is to say: we may have the privilege if we have the leisure. The student who sits down to the paltry remnant that has reached us will, if he reads Lope de Vega’s plays without interruption for seven hours a day, be over six months before he reaches the end of his delightful task. I say it in all seriousness—a delightful task—but it would be idle to pretend that there are no tracts of barren ground. A large proportion of Lope’s dramatic work is brilliant improvisation, and is not of stuff that endures; but there are veins of pure ore in his dross, and in moments of inspiration he ranks with the greatest dramatists in the world. He has himself endeavoured to state his dramatic theory in the _Arte nuevo de hacer comedias en este tiempo_, and the contrast with his practice is amusing. He opens with a profession of faith in Aristotle’s rules, of which he knew nothing beyond what he could gather from the pedantic schoolmen of the Renaissance, but goes on to confess that he disregards these sacred precepts because the public which pays cares nothing for them, and must be addressed in the foolish fashion that its folly demands. The only approach to a dramatic principle in the _Arte nuevo_ is a matter-of-course approval of unity of action, the necessity of which has never been doubted by any playwright who knew his business. The rest of the unities go by the board, and the aspiring dramatist is solemnly exhorted to invent a clever plot, to maintain the interest steadily throughout, and to postpone the climax as long as possible so as to humour the public which loves to be kept on tenterhooks till the last moment. ‘Invent a clever plot and maintain the interest steadily throughout’—it is easily said, but how to do it? Lope proceeds to give his views as to the metres most appropriate for certain situations and emotions: laments are best expressed in _décimas_, the sonnet suits suspense, the _romance_ (or, still better, the octave) is the vehicle of narrative, tercets are to be used in weighty passages, and _redondillas_ in love-scenes. And Lope ends by admitting that only six of the 483 plays which he had composed up to 1609 were in accordance with the rules of art.