[439] He has even ventured to take the beautiful and familiar ballad, “Sale la Estrella de Venus,”--which is in the Romancero General, the “Guerras de Granada,” and many other places,--and work it up into a dialogue. “El Sol Parado,” Comedias, Tom. XVII., Madrid, 1621, ff. 223-224. [440] In the same way, he seizes upon the old ballad, “Reduan bien se te acuerda,” and uses it in the “Embidia de la Nobleza,” Comedias, Tom. XXIII., Madrid, 1638, f. 192. [441] For example, the ballad in the Romancero of 1555, beginning “Despues que el Rey Rodrigo,” at the end of Jornada II., in “El Ultimo Godo,” Comedias, Tom. XXV., Zaragoza, 1647. [442] Compare “El Bastardo Mudarra” (Comedias, Tom. XXIV., Zaragoza, 1641, ff. 75, 76) with the ballads, “Ruy Velasquez de Lara,” and “Llegados son los Infantes”; and, in the same play, the dialogue between Mudarra and his mother, (f. 83), with the ballad, “Sentados á un ajedrez.” [443] “El Casamiento en la Muerte,” (Comedias, Tom. I., Valladolid, 1604, ff. 198, etc.), in which the following well-known old ballads are freely used, viz.:--“O Belerma! O Belerma!” “No tiene heredero alguno”; “Al pie de un túmulo negro”; “Bañando está las prisiones”; and others. Now Santa Fé is circled round With canvas walls so fair, And tents that cover all the ground With silks and velvets rare,--[444] [444] It is in the last chapter of the “Guerras Civiles de Granada”; but Lope has given it, with a slight change in the phraseology, as follows:-- Cercada está Sancta Fé Con mucho lienço encerado; Y al rededor muchas tiendas De terciopelo y damasco. It occurs in many collections of ballads, and is founded on the fact, that a sort of village of rich tents was established near Granada, which, after an accidental conflagration, was turned into a town, that still exists, within whose walls were signed both the commission of Columbus to seek the New World, and the capitulation of Granada. The imitation of this ballad by Lope is in his “Cerco de Santa Fé,” Comedias, Tom. I., Valladolid, 1604, f. 69. it must have stirred his audience as with the sound of a trumpet.