This is not the kind of immortality that any one desires, but this—or something not much better—is the only kind of immortality that most of the five hundred are likely to attain. The iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth its poppy on the crowd, and the long line closes with Bancés Candamo, who died in 1704. He was the favourite court-dramatist as Calderón had been before him. To say that Bancés Candamo occupied the place once filled by Calderón is to show how greatly the Spanish theatre had degenerated. No doubt it must have perished in any case, for institutions die as certainly as men. But its end was hastened by two most influential personages—one a man of genius, and the other a fribble—who had the welfare of the stage at heart. By reducing dramatic composition to a formula, Calderón arrested any possible development; by lavish expenditure on decorations, Philip IV. imposed his taste for spectacle upon the public. The public gets what it deserves: when the stage-carpenter comes in, the dramatist goes out. Compelled to write pieces which would suit the elaborate scenery provided at the Buen Retiro, Calderón was the first to suffer. He and Philip,[106] between them, dealt the Spanish drama its death-blow. It lingered on in senile decay for fifty years, and with Bancés Candamo it died. It was high time for it to be gone: for nothing is more lamentable than the progressive degradation of what has once been a great and living force. CHAPTER X MODERN SPANISH NOVELISTS