Montalvan’s _autos_, of which only two or three remain to us, are not to be spoken of in the same manner. His “Polyphemus,” for instance, in which the Saviour and a Christian Church are introduced on one side of the stage, while the principal Cyclops himself comes in as an allegorical representation of Judaism on the other, is as wild and extravagant as any thing in the Spanish drama. A similar remark may be made on the “Escanderbech,” founded on the history of the half-barbarous, half-chivalrous Iskander Beg, and his conversion to Christianity in the middle of the fifteenth century. We find it, in fact, difficult, at the present day, to believe that pieces like the first of these, in which Polyphemus plays on a guitar, and an island in the earliest ages of Greek tradition sinks into the sea amidst a discharge of squibs and rockets, can have been represented anywhere.[532] [532] Both of them are in the fifth day’s entertainments of his “Para Todos.” But Montalvan followed Lope in every thing, and, like the rest of the dramatic writers of his age, was safe from such censure as he would now receive, because he wrote to satisfy the demands of the popular audiences of Madrid.[533] He made the _novela_, or tale, the chief basis of interest for his drama, and relied mainly on the passion of jealousy to give it life and movement.[534] Bowing to the authority of the court, he avoided, we are told, representing rebellion on the stage, lest he should seem to encourage it; and was even unwilling to introduce men of rank in degrading situations, for fear disloyalty should be implied or imputed. He would gladly, it is added, have restrained his action to twenty-four hours, and limited each of the three divisions of his full-length dramas to three hundred lines, never leaving the stage empty in either of them. But such rules were not prescribed to him by the popular will, and he wrote too freely and too fast to be more anxious about observing his own theories than his master was.[535] [533] Preface to “Para Todos.” [534] The story of “El Zeloso Estremeño” is altered from that of the same name by Cervantes, but is indebted to it largely, and takes the names of several of its personages. At the end of the play entitled “De un Castigo dos Venganzas,” a play full of horrors, Montalvan declares the plot to be-- Historia tan verdadera, Que no ha cincuenta semanas, Que sucedió. Almost all his plays are founded on exciting and interesting tales.