How familiar it sounds—this wailing over ‘the rules of art’! Just so Ben Jonson lamented that Shakespeare ‘wanted art’—that is, he paid no heed to the pseudo-Aristotelian precepts concerning dramatic composition. Nor did Lope: and it is precisely by neglecting to follow blind leaders of the blind, and by giving free play to their individual genius that Shakespeare and Lope de Vega have become immortal. Rules may serve for men of simple talent; but an original mind attains independence by intelligently breaking them, and thus arrives at inventing a new and living form of art. It is in this sense that we call Lope the founder of the Spanish theatre. His transforming touch is magical. Invested with the splendour of his imagination, the merest shred of fact, as in _La Estrella de Sevilla_, is converted into a romantic drama, living, natural, real, arresting as an experience suffered by oneself. And, with all Lope’s rapidity of workmanship, his finest effects are not the result of rare and happy accident: they are deliberately and delicately calculated. We know from the testimony of Ricardo de Turia in the _Norte de la poesía española_ that Lope was an assiduous frequenter of the theatre; that, long after his reputation was established, he would sit absorbed, listening to whatever play was being given; and that he took careful note of every successful scene or situation. He was never above learning from others; but they could teach him little: he was the master of them all. It is frequently alleged against him that his copiousness was an artistic blunder, and that he would have acted more wisely in the interest of his fame, if he had concentrated his magnificent powers on a smaller number of plays, and perfected them. In other words, he would have done more, if he had done less. This may be true; Virgil wrote ten lines a day, and they endure for ever: Lope wrote three thousand lines a day, and most of them have perished. But we must take genius as we find it, and be thankful to accept it on its own conditions. It is far from clear to me that Lope chose unwisely. He had not only a reputation to make, but a mission to fulfil. For the work that he was born to do—the creation of a national theatre—copiousness was an essential need. Continuous production, as Chorley puts it, is a vital requisite to ‘the existence of the drama in its true form, as acted poetry.’ This, however, is beyond the power of a few normal men of genius. Schiller and Goethe combined failed to create a national theatre at Weimar: no one but Lope could have succeeded in creating a national theatre at Madrid. At precisely the right moment Spain happily produced a most abnormal writer who could throw off admirable plays—many of them imperfect, but many of them masterpieces—in such profusion as twenty ordinary men of genius could not equal. Luzán declares that Lope so accustomed the Spanish public to constant novelty that no piece could be repeated after two performances.