No doubt, such a drama, extending over forty or fifty years of time, with its motley crowd of personages,--among whom are angels and demons, Envy, Falsehood, and the River Manzanares,--would now be accounted grotesque and irreverent, rather than any thing else. But in the time of Lope, the audiences not only brought a willing faith to such representations, but received gladly an exhibition of the miracles which connected the saint they worshipped and his beneficent virtues with their own times and their personal well-being.[387] If to this we add the restraints on the theatre, and Lope’s extraordinary facility, grace, and ingenuity, which never failed to consult and gratify the popular taste, we shall have all the elements necessary to explain the great number of religious dramas he composed, whether of the nature of Mysteries, Scripture stories, or lives of saints. They belonged to his age and country as much as he himself did. [387] How far these plays were felt to be religious by the crowds who witnessed them may be seen in a thousand ways; among the rest, by the fact mentioned by Madame d’Aulnoy, in 1679, that, when St. Antony, on the stage, repeated his _Confiteor_, the audience all fell on their knees, smote their breasts heavily, and cried out, _Meâ culpâ_. Voyage d’Espagne à la Haye, 1693, 18mo, Tom. I. p. 56. But Lope adventured with success in another form of the drama, not only more grotesque than that of the full-length religious plays, but intended yet more directly for popular edification,--the “Autos Sacramentales,” or Sacramental Acts,--a sort of religious plays performed in the streets during the season when the gorgeous ceremonies of the “Corpus Christi” filled them with rejoicing crowds.[388] No form of the Spanish drama is older, and none had so long a reign, or maintained during its continuance so strong a hold on the general favor. Its representations, as we have already seen, may be found among the earliest intimations of the national literature; and, as we shall learn hereafter, they were with difficulty suppressed by the royal authority after the middle of the eighteenth century. In the age of Lope, and in that immediately following, they were at the height of their success, and had become an important part of the religious ceremonies arranged for the solemn sacramental festival to which they were devoted, not only in Madrid, but throughout Spain; all the theatres being closed for a month to give place to them and to do them honor.[389] [388] _Auto_ was originally a forensic term, from the Latin _actus_, and meant a decree or a judgment of a court. Afterwards it was applied to these religious dramas, which were called _Autos sacramentales_ or _Autos del Corpus Christi_, and to the _autos de fé_ of the Inquisition; in both cases, because they were considered solemn religious _acts_. Covarrubias, Tesoro de la Lengua Castellana, ad verb. _Auto_.