His _autos_ endured for over a century. As late as 1760 _El Cubo de la Almudena_ was played on Corpus Christi at the Teatro del Príncipe in Madrid, while _La Semilla y la cizaña_ was played at the Teatro de la Cruz. The _autos_ were obviously dying; they were no longer given in the open air before the King and Court, and the devout multitude; they were shorn of their pomp, and played indoors before an indifferent audience amid irreverent remarks. On one occasion, according to Clavijo, after the actor who played the part of Satan had declaimed a passage effectively, an admirer in the pit raised a cheer for the devil:—_¡Viva el demonio!_ There is evidence to prove that the public performance of the _autos sacramentales_ was often the occasion of disorderly and scandalous scenes. Clavijo has been blamed for his articles in _El Pensador matritense_, advocating their suppression, and perhaps his motives were not so pure as he pretends. Yet he was certainly right in suggesting that the day for _autos_ was over. They were prohibited on June 9, 1765. But they must soon have died in any case, for the supply had ceased, and later writers like Antonio de Zamora were mostly content to retouch Calderón’s _autos_.[105] Zamora and Bancés Candamo were not the men to keep up the high tradition, and the attitude of the public had completely changed. The fact that his _autos sacramentales_ are little read in Spain, and are scarcely read at all out of Spain, is most unfortunate for Calderón, for his noblest achievement remains comparatively unknown. His reputation abroad is based on his secular plays which represent but one side of his delightful genius, and that side is not his strongest. The works of Lope de Vega and of Tirso de Molina have become available once more, and this circumstance has necessarily affected the critical estimate of Calderón as a dramatist. Paul Verlaine, indeed, persisted in placing him above Shakespeare, but Verlaine was the last of the Old Guard. Calderón is relatively less important than he was thought to be before Chorley’s famous campaign in _The Athenæum_: all now agree with Chorley that Calderón is inferior to Lope de Vega in creative faculty and humour, and inferior to Tirso de Molina in depth and variety of conception. But, when every deduction is made, Calderón is still one of the most stately figures in Spanish literature. Naturally a great lyric poet, his deliberate art won him a pre-eminent position among poets who used the dramatic form, and he lives as the typical representative of the devout, gallant, loyal, artificial society in which he moved. He is not, as once was thought, the synthesis of the Spanish genius, but no one incarnates more completely one aspect of that genius. Who illustrates better than the author of _El Principe constante_ what Heiberg wrote of Spanish poets generally just ninety years ago:—‘Habet itaque poësis hispanica animam gothicam