The marks of Guillen de Castro’s personal condition, and of the age in which he lived and wrote, are no less distinct in his dramas than the marks of his poetical allegiance. His “Mismatches in Valencia” seems as if its story might have been constructed out of facts within the poet’s own knowledge. It is a series of love intrigues, like those in Lope’s plays, and ends with the dissolution of two marriages by the influence of a lady, who, disguised as a page, lives in the same house with her lover and his wife, but whose machinations are at last exposed, and she herself driven to the usual resort of entering a convent. His “Don Quixote,” on the other hand, is taken from the First Part of Cervantes’s romance, then as fresh as any Valencian tale. The loves of Dorothea and Fernando, and the madness of Cardenio, form the materials for its principal plot; and the _dénouement_ is the transportation of the knight, in a cage, to his own house, by the curate and barber, just as he is carried home by them in the romance;--parts of the story being slightly altered to give it a more dramatic turn, though the language of the original fiction is often retained, and the obligations to it are fully recognized. Both of these dramas are written chiefly in the old _redondillas_, with a careful versification; but there is little poetical invention in either of them, and the first act of the “Mismatches in Valencia” is disfigured by a game of wits, fashionable, no doubt, in society at the time, but one that gives occasion, in the play, to nothing but a series of poor tricks and puns.[505] [505] Both these plays are in the first volume of his Comedias, printed in 1614; but I have the Don Quixote in a separate pamphlet, without paging or date, and with rude wood-cuts, such as belong to the oldest Spanish publications of the sort. The first time Don Quixote appears in it, the stage direction is, “Enter Don Quixote on Rozinante, dressed as he is described in his book.” The _redondillas_ in this drama, regarded as mere verses, are excellent; e. g. Cardenio’s lamentations at the end of the first act:-- Donde me llevan los pies Sin la vida? El seso pierdo; Pero como seré cuerdo Si fué traydor el Marques? Que cordura, que concierto, Tendré yo, si estoy sin mí? Sin ser, sin alma y sin tí? Ay, Lucinda, que me has muerto!-- and so on. Guerin de Bouscal, one of a considerable number of French dramatists (see Puybusque, Tom. II. p. 441) who resorted freely to Spanish sources between 1630 and 1650, brought this drama of Guillen on the French stage in 1638.