These were the famous _autos sacramentales_ (i.e. solemn "acts" or proceedings in honour of the Sacrament), which were performed in the open air by actors who had filled the cars of the sacred procession. Of these Lope wrote about 400. These entertainments were arranged on a fixed scheme, comprising a prologue in dialogue between two or more actors in character (_loa_), a farce (_entremes_), and the _auto_ proper, an allegorical scene of religious purport, as an example of which Ticknor cites the _Bridge of the World_,--in which the Prince of Darkness in vain seeks to defend the bridge against the Knight of the Cross, who finally leads the Soul of Man in triumph across it. Not all the _entremeses_ of Lope and others were, however, composed for insertion in these _autos_. This long-lived popular species, together with the old kind of dramatic dialogue called _eclogues_, completes the list of the varieties of his dramatic works. The school of Lope. The example of Lope was followed by a large number of writers, and Spain thus rapidly became possessed of a dramatic literature almost unparalleled in quantity--for in fertility also Lope was but the first among many. Among the writers of Lope's school, his friend G. de Castro (1569-1631) must not be passed by, for his _Cid_[57] was the basis of Corneille's; nor J. P. de Montalban, "the first-born of Lope's genius," the extravagance of whose imagination, like that of Lee, culminated in madness. Soon after him died (1639) Juan Ruiz de Alarcon, in whose plays, as contrasted with those of Lope, has been recognized the distinctive element of a moral purpose. To G. Tellez, called Tirso de Molina (d. 1648), no similar praise seems due; but the frivolous gaiety of the inventor of the complete character of Don Juan was accompanied by ingenuity in the construction of his excellent[58] though at times "sensational"[59] plots. F. de Rojas Zorrilla (b. 1607), who was largely plundered by the French dramatists of the latter half of the century, survived Molina for about a generation. In vain scholars of strictly classical tastes protested in essays in prose and verse against the ascendancy of the popular drama; the prohibition of Philip II. had been recalled two years after his death and was never renewed; and the activity of the theatre spread through the towns and villages of the land, everywhere under the controlling influence of the school of writers who had established so complete a harmony between the drama and the tastes and tendencies of the people. Calderon.