_Del Rey abajo, ninguno_—‘None, under the rank of King’—is the alternative title of _García del Castañar_, and these four energetic words sum up the exaltation of monarchical sentiment which is the leading motive of the play. Buckle, writing of Spain, says in his sweeping way that ‘whatever the King came in contact with, was in some degree hallowed by his touch,’ and that ‘no one might marry a mistress whom he had deserted.’ This is not quite accurate. We know that, at the very time of which we are speaking, the notorious ‘Calderona’—the mother of Don Juan de Austria—married an actor named Tomás Rojas, and that she returned to her husband and the stage after her _liaison_ with Philip IV. was ended. Still, it is true that reverence for the person of the sovereign was a real and common sentiment among Spaniards. Clarendon speaks of ‘their submissive reverence to their princes being a vital part of their religion,’ and records the horrified amazement of Olivares on observing Buckingham’s familiarity with the Prince of Wales—‘a crime monstrous to the Spaniard.’ This reverential feeling, like every other emotion, found dramatic expression in the work of Lope de Vega. It is the leading theme in _La Estrella de Sevilla_, and Lope has even been accused of almost blasphemous adulation by those who only know this celebrated play in the popular recast made at the end of the eighteenth century by Cándido María Trigueros, and entitled _Sancho Ortiz de las Roelas_. The charge is based on a well-known passage:— ¡La espada sacastes vos, y al Rey quisisteis herir ¿El Rey no pudo mentir? No, que es imagen de Dios. But it is not Lope who says that the King is the image of God. These lines are interpolated by Trigueros, who felt no particular loyalty to anybody, and overdid his part when he endeavoured to put himself in Lope’s position. What was an occasional motive in Lope’s work reappears frequently and in a more emphatic form in Calderón’s work. The sentiment of loyalty is expressed with something like fanaticism in _La Banda y la flor_ and in _Guárdate del agua mansa_; and with something unpleasantly like profanity in the _auto sacramental_ entitled _El Indulto general_ where the lamentable Charles II. seems to be placed almost on the same level as the Saviour.