quite true that Calderón has made an admirable play out of Lope’s sketch; but it is also true that the dramatic conception of _El Alcalde de Zalamea_ is due to Lope, and not to Calderón. Any other dramatist in Calderón’s place would have been compelled to accept the conventions which Lope de Vega had imposed upon the Spanish stage—conventional presentations of loyalty and honour. Calderón devoted his magnificent gifts to elaborating these conventions into something like a code. His readiness in borrowing may be taken to mean that he was not, in the largest sense, an inventor, and the substance of his plays shows that he was rarely interested in the presentation of character. But he had the keenest theatrical sense, and once he is provided with a theme he can extract from it an intense dramatic interest. Moreover, he equals Lope in the cleverness with which he works up a complicated plot, and surpasses Lope in the adroitness with which he employs the mechanical resources of the stage. In addition to these minor talents, he has the gift of impressive and ornate diction. It is a little unfortunate that many who read him in translations begin with _La Vida es sueño_, a fine symbolic play disfigured by the introduction of so incredible a character as Rosaura, declaiming gongoresque speeches altogether out of place. Calderón is liable to these momentary aberrations; yet, at his best, he is almost unsurpassable. Read, for example, the majestic speech of the Demon in _El Mágico prodigioso_ which Trench very justifiably compares with Milton. The address to Cyprian loses next to nothing of its splendour in Shelley’s version:— Chastised, I know The depth to which ambition falls; too mad Was the attempt, and yet more mad were now Repentance of the irrevocable deed:— Therefore I chose this ruin with the glory Of not to be subdued, before the shame Of reconciling me with him who reigns By coward cession.