_Servant._ No more! enough! That word explains the whole;-- Ay, and if thirty worlds were going mad, It would be reason good for all the uproar. The chief characteristic of this play is its extremely ingenious and involved plot. Few foreigners, perhaps not one, ever comprehended all its intrigue on first reading it, or on first seeing it acted. Yet it has always been one of the most popular plays on the Spanish stage; and the commonest and most ignorant in the audiences of the great cities of Spain do not find its ingenuities and involutions otherwise than diverting. Quite different from either of the preceding dramas, and in some respects better than either, is Tirso’s “Bashful Man at Court,”--a play often acted, on its first appearance, in Italy, as well as in Spain, and one in which, as its author tells us, a prince of Castile once performed the part of the hero. It is not properly historical, though partly founded on the story of Pedro, Duke of Coimbra, who, in 1449, after having been regent of Portugal, was finally despoiled of his power and defeated in an open rebellion.[545] Tirso supposes him to have retired to the mountains, and there, disguised as a shepherd, to have educated a son in complete ignorance of his rank. This son, under the name of Mireno, is the hero of the piece. Finding himself possessed of nobler sentiments and higher intelligence than those of the rustics among whom he lives, he half suspects that he is of noble origin; and, escaping from his solitude, appears at court, determined to try his fortune. Accident favors him. He enters the service of the royal favorite, and wins the love of his daughter, who is as free and bold, from an excessive knowledge of the world, as her lover is humble and gentle in his ignorance of it. There his rank is discovered, and the play ends happily. [545] Crónica de D. Juan el Segundo, ad ann. A story like this, even with the usual accompaniment of an underplot, is too slight and simple to produce much effect. But the character of the principal personage, and its gradual development, rendered it long a favorite on the Spanish stage. Nor was this preference unreasonable. His noble pride, struggling against the humble circumstances in which he finds himself placed; the suspicion he hardly dares to indulge, that his real rank is equal to his aspirations,--a suspicion which yet governs his life; and the modesty which tempers the most ambitious of his thoughts, form, when taken together, one of the most lofty and beautiful ideals of the old Castilian character.[546] [546] The “Vergonzoso en Palacio” was printed as early as 1624, in the “Cigarrales de Toledo,” (Madrid, 1624, 4to, p. 100), and took its name, I suppose, from a Spanish proverb, “Mozo vergonzoso no es para palacio.”