A love-story unites its rather incongruous materials into something like a connected whole; but the part we read with the most interest is that assigned to Cervantes, who appears under his family name of Saavedra, without disguise, though without any mark of respect.[365] Considering that Lope took from him some of the best materials for this very piece, and that the sufferings and heroism of Cervantes at Algiers must necessarily have been present to his thoughts when he composed it, we can hardly do him any injustice by adding, that he ought either to have given Cervantes a more dignified part, and alluded to him with tenderness and consideration, or else have refrained from introducing him at all. [365] The passages in which Cervantes occurs are on ff. 245, 251, and especially 262 and 277, Comedias, Tom. XXV. The three forms of Lope’s drama which have thus far been considered, and which are nearly akin to each other,[366] were, no doubt, the spontaneous productions of his own genius; modified, indeed, by what he found already existing, and by the taste and will of the audiences for which he wrote, but still essentially his own. Probably, if he had been left to himself and to the mere influences of the theatre, he would have preferred to write no other dramas than such as would naturally come under one of these divisions. But neither he nor his audiences were permitted to settle the whole of this question. The Church, always powerful in Spain, but never so powerful as during the latter part of the reign of Philip the Second, when Lope was just rising into notice, was offended with the dramas then so much in favor, and not without reason. Their free love-stories, their duels, and, indeed, their ideas generally upon domestic life and personal character, have, unquestionably, any thing but a Christian tone.[367] A controversy, therefore, naturally arose concerning their lawfulness, and this controversy was continued till 1598, when, by a royal decree, the representation of secular plays in Madrid was entirely forbidden, and the common theatres were closed for nearly two years.[368] [366] The fusion of the three classes may be seen at a glance in Lope’s fine play, “El Mejor Alcalde el Rey,” (Comedias, Tom. XXI., Madrid, 1635), founded on a passage in the fourth part of the “General Chronicle” (ed. 1604, f. 327). The hero and heroine belong to the condition of peasants; the person who makes the mischief is their liege lord; and, from the end of the second act, the king and one or two of the principal persons about the court play leading parts. On the whole, it ranks technically with the _comedias heróicas_; and yet the best and most important scenes are those relating to common life, while others of no little consequence belong to the class of _capa y espada_.