“The Star of Seville,” on the other hand, though much more truly tragic, is liable to no such objection.[338] In some respects it resembles Corneille’s “Cid.” At the command of his king and from the loftiest loyalty, a knight of Seville kills his friend, a brother of the lady whom he is about to marry. The king afterwards endeavours to hold him harmless for the crime; but the royal judges refuse to interrupt the course of the law in his favor, and the brave knight is saved from death only by the plenary confession of his guilty sovereign. It is one of the very small number of Lope’s pieces that have no comic and distracting underplot. Not a few of its scenes are admirable; especially that in which the king urges the knight to kill his friend; that in which the lovely and innocent creature whom the knight is about to marry receives, in the midst of the frank and delightful expressions of her happiness, the dead body of her brother, who has been slain by her lover; and that in which the Alcaldes solemnly refuse to wrest the law in obedience to the royal commands. The conclusion is better than that in the tragedy of Corneille. The lady abandons the world and retires to a convent. [338] Old copies of this play are excessively scarce, and I obtained, therefore, many years ago, a manuscript of it, from which it was reprinted twice in this country by Mr. F. Sales, in his “Obras Maestras Dramáticas” (Boston, 1828 and 1840); the last time with corrections, kindly furnished by Don A. Duran, of Madrid;--a curious fact in Spanish bibliography, and one that should be mentioned to the honor of Mr. Sales, whose various publications have done much to spread the love of Spanish literature in the United States, and to whom I am indebted for my first knowledge of it. The same play is well known on the modern Spanish stage, and has been reprinted, both at Madrid and London, with large alterations, under the title of “Sancho Ortis de las Roelas.” An excellent abstract of it, in its original state, and faithful translations of parts of it, are to be found in Lord Holland’s Life of Lope (Vol. I. pp. 155-200); out of which, and not out of the Spanish original, Baron Zedlitz composed “Der Stern von Sevilla”; a play by no means without merit, which was printed at Stuttgard in 1830, and has been often acted in different parts of Germany.