This is not quite exact. But assuming it to be true, you may say that Lope spoilt the public, as well as his own work. Well, that is as it may be: in our time, at all events, the plays that run for a thousand nights are not always the best. Lope was equal to the demand made by exacting audiences, and he remained equal to it for an unexampled length of time. The most hostile critic must grant that Lope was the greatest inventor in the history of the drama. And he excelled in every kind. In tragedy he has given us such works as _Las Paces de los Reyes_ and _La Fianza satisfecha_, and he would doubtless have given more had not the public rebelled against a too mournful presentation of life. Chorley, whom it is impossible to avoid quoting when Lope is under discussion, points to the significant fact that so great a tragedy as _La Estrella de Sevilla_ is not included among Lope’s dramatic works, nor in the two great miscellaneous collections of Spanish plays—the _Escogidas_ and _Diferentes_, as they are called. It exists only as a _suelta_. Great in tragedy, Lope is greater—or, at least, is more frequently great—in contemporary comedy, in the realisation of character: _El perro del hortelano_, _La batalla del honor_, _Los melindres de Belisa_, _Las flores de Don Juan_ and _La Esclava de su galán_ are there to prove it. There are obvious flaws in Lope’s pieces, but we can never feel quite sure that the flaws which irritate us most are not interpolations. He seems to have revised only the twelve volumes of his plays (Parts IX.-XX.) published between 1617 and 1625 inclusive, and two posthumous volumes; a large proportion of his work is so mishandled in the pirated editions that, as he avers, one line from his pen is smothered by a hundred lines from the pen of some unscrupulous actor or needy theatrical hanger-on.