[525] “Orfeo en Lengua Castellana,” por J. P. de Montalvan, Madrid, 1624, 4to. N. Ant., Bib. Nov., Tom. I. p. 757, and Lope de Vega, Comedias, Tom. XX., Madrid, 1629, in the Preface to which he says the Orfeo of Montalvan “contains whatever can contribute to its perfection.” Montalvan’s chief success was on the stage, where his popularity was so considerable, that the booksellers found it for their interest to print under his name many plays that were none of his.[526] He himself prepared for publication two complete volumes of his dramatic works, which appeared in 1638 and 1639, and were reprinted in 1652; but besides this, he had earlier inserted several plays in one of his works of fiction, and printed many more in other ways, making in all about sixty; the whole of which seem to have been published, as far as they were published by himself, during the last seven years of his life.[527] [526] His complaints are as loud as Lope’s or Calderon’s, and are to be found in the Preface to the first volume of his plays, Alcalá, 1638, 4to, and in his “Para Todos,” 1661, p. 169. [527] The date of the first volume is 1639 on the title-page, but 1638 at the end. If we take the first volume of his collection, which is more likely to have received his careful revision than the last, and examine it, as an illustration of his theories and style, we shall easily understand the character of his drama. Six of the plays contained in it, or one half of the whole number, are of the class of _capa y espada_, and rely for their interest on some exhibition of jealousy, or some intrigue involving the point of honor. They are generally, like the one entitled “Fulfilment of Duty,” not skilfully put together, though never uninteresting; and they all contain passages of poetical feeling, injured in their effect by other passages, in which taste seems to be set at defiance,--a remark particularly applicable to the play called “What’s done can’t be helped.” Four of the remaining six are historical. One of them is on the suppression of the Templars, which Raynouard, referring to Montalvan, took as a subject for one of the few successful French tragedies of the first half of the nineteenth century. Another is on Sejanus, not as he is represented in Tacitus, but as he appears in the “General Chronicle of Spain.” And yet another is on Don John of Austria, which has no _dénouement_, except a sketch of Don John’s life given by himself, and making out above three hundred lines. A single play of the twelve is an extravagant specimen of the dramas written to satisfy the requisitions of the Church, and is founded on the legends relating to San Pedro de Alcántara.[528] [528] It should perhaps be added, that another religious play of Montalvan, “El Divino Nazareno Sanson,” containing the history of Samson from the contest with the lion to the pulling down of the Philistine temple, is less offensive.