[359] The popular English story of “Fryer Bacon” hardly goes back farther than to the end of the sixteenth century, though some of its materials may be traced to the “Gesta Romanorum.” Robert Greene’s play on it was printed in 1594. Both may be considered as running parallel with the story and play of the “Donzella Teodor,” so as to be read with advantage when comparing the Spanish drama with the English. But Lope knew his audiences, and succeeded in adapting this old tale to their taste. The damsel Theodora, as he arranges her character for the stage, is the daughter of a professor at Toledo, and is educated in all the learning of her father’s schools. She, however, is not raised by it above the influences of the tender passion, and, running away with her lover, is captured by a vessel from the coast of Barbary, and carried as a slave successively to Oran, to Constantinople, and finally to Persia, where she is sold to the Sultan for an immense sum on account of her rare knowledge, displayed in the last act of the play much as it is in the original tale of Alfonso, and sometimes in the same words. But the love intrigue, with a multitude of jealous troubles and adventures, runs through the whole; and as the Sultan is made to understand at last the relations of all the parties, who are strangely assembled before him, he gives the price of the damsel as her dower, and marries her to the lover with whom she originally fled from Toledo. The principal jest, both in the drama and the story, is, that a learned doctor, who is defeated by Theodora in a public trial of wits, is bound by the terms of the contest to be stripped naked, and buys off his ignominy with a sum which goes still further to increase the lady’s fortune and the content of her husband.[360] [360] Comedias, Tom. IX., Barcelona, 1618, ff. 27, etc.