As a writer of high comedy Coello had many rivals in Spain—men slightly his seniors, like Antonio Hurtado de Mendoza, who became known in England through Fanshawe’s translations, and who must also have been known in France, since his play _El Marido hace mujer_ was laid under contribution by Molière in _L’École des maris_; men like his contemporary Álvaro Cubillo de Aragón, whose _El Señor de Buenas Noches_ was turned to account by the younger Corneille in _La Comtesse d’Orgueil_; men like his junior, Fernando de Zárate y Castronovo, the author of _La Presumida y la hermosa_, in which Molière found a hint for _Les Femmes savantes_. But the most successful writer in this vein was Agustín Moreto y Cavaña, who was born in 1618, just as Calderón was leaving Salamanca University to seek his fortune as a dramatist at Madrid. To judge by his more characteristic plays we should guess Moreto to have been the happiest of men, and the gayest; but late in life he gave an opening to writers of ‘hypothetical biography,’ and they took it. For instance, when he was over forty he became devout, took orders, and made a will directing that he should be buried in the Pradillo del Carmen at Toledo—a place which has been identified as the burial-ground of criminals who had been executed. This identification gave rise to the theory that he must have had some ghastly crime upon his conscience, and, as particulars are generally forthcoming in such cases, some charitable persons leapt to the conclusion that Moreto was the undetected assassin of Lope’s friend, Baltasar Elisio de Medinilla.