The extraordinary variety in the character of Lope’s dramas is as remarkable as their number, and contributed not a little to render him the monarch of the stage while he lived, and the great master of the national theatre ever since. But though this vast variety and inexhaustible fertility constitute, as it were, the two great corner-stones on which his success rested, still there were other circumstances attending it that should by no means be overlooked, when we are examining, not only the surprising results themselves, but the means by which they were obtained. The first of these is the principle which may be considered as running through the whole of his full-length plays,--that of making all other interests subordinate to the interest of the story. Thus, the characters are a matter evidently of inferior moment with him; so that the idea of exhibiting a single passion giving a consistent direction to all the energies of a strong will, as in the case of Richard the Third, or, as in the case of Macbeth, distracting them all no less consistently, does not occur in the whole range of his dramas. Sometimes, it is true, though rarely, as in Sancho Ortiz, he develops a marked and generous spirit, with distinctive lineaments; but in no case is this the main object, and in no case is it done with the appearance of an artist-like skill or a deliberate purpose. On the contrary, a great majority of his characters are almost as much standing masks as Pantalone is on the Venetian stage, or Scapin on the French. The _primer galan_, or hero, all love, honor, and jealousy; the _dama_, or heroine, no less loving and jealous, but yet more rash and heedless; and the brother, or if not the brother, then the _barba_, or old man and father, ready to cover the stage with blood, if the lover has even been seen in the house of the heroine,--these recur continually, and serve, not only in the secular, but often in the religious pieces, as the fixed points round which the different actions, with their different incidents, are made to revolve. In the same way, the dialogue is used chiefly to bring out the plot, and hardly at all to bring out the characters. This is obvious in the long speeches, sometimes consisting of two or three hundred verses, which are as purely narrative as an Italian _novella_, and often much like one; and it is seen, too, in the crowd of incidents that compose the action, which not infrequently fails to find space sufficient to spread out all its ingenious involutions and make them easily intelligible; a difficulty of which Lope once gives his audience fair warning, telling them at the outset of the piece, that they must not lose a syllable of the first explanation, or they will certainly fail to understand the curious plot that follows.