The plays of Lope, and those of the national Spanish drama in general, are divided into classes which it is naturally not always easy, and which there is no reason to suppose him always to have intended, to keep distinct from one another. After in his early youth composing eclogues, pastoral plays, and allegorical moralities in the old style, he began his theatrical activity at Madrid about 1590, and the plays which he thenceforth produced have been distributed under the following heads. The _comedias_, all of which are in verse, include (1) the so-called _c. de capa y espada_--not comedies proper, but dramas in which the principal personages are taken from the class of society that wears cloak and sword. Gallantry is their main theme, an interesting and complicated, but well-constructed and perspicuous intrigue their chief feature; and this is usually accompanied by an underplot in which the _gracioso_ plays his part. Their titles are frequently taken from the old proverbs or proverbial phrases of the people[52] upon the theme suggested, by which the plays often (as G. H. Lewes admirably expresses it) constitute a kind of gloss (_glosa_) in action. This is the favourite species of the national Spanish theatre; and to the plots of the plays belonging to it the drama of other nations owes a debt almost incalculable in extent. (2) The _c. heróicas_ are distinguished by some of their personages being of royal or very high rank, and by their themes being often historical and largely[53] (though not invariably[54]) taken from the national annals, or founded on contemporary or recent events.[55] Hence they exhibit a greater gravity of tone; but in other respects there is no difference between them and the cloak-and-sword comedies with which they share the element of comic underplots. Occasionally Lope condescended in the opposite direction, to (3) plays of which the scene is laid in common life, but for which no special name appears to have existed.[56] Meanwhile, both he and his successors were too devoted sons of the church not to acknowledge in some sort her claim to influence the national drama. This claim she had never relinquished, even when she could no longer retain an absolute control over the stage. For a time, indeed, she was able to reassert even this; for the exhibition of all secular plays was in 1598 prohibited by the dying Philip II., and remained so for two years; and Lope with his usual facility proceeded to supply religious plays of various kinds. After a few dramas on scriptural subjects he turned to the legends of the saints; and the _comedias de santos_, of which he wrote a great number, became an accepted later Spanish variety of the miracle-play. True, however, to the popular instincts of his genius, he threw himself with special zeal and success into the composition of another kind of religious plays--a development of the Corpus Christi pageants, in honour of which all the theatres had to close their doors for a month.