_Almas Doentes_ (1905), which treats of hereditary madness and suicide, and in the moving tragedy _Envelhecer_ (1909), although it is perhaps out of keeping with the finely portrayed character of Eduardo de Mello that he should so end who had endured so nobly. His prose style has great merit (a few words require excision, e. g. _restaurante_, _rewolver_, _desconforto_), and he wrote many shorter problem pieces or episodes in prose: _Fim de Penitencia_ (1895), _O Auto do Busto_ (1899), _O Tio Pedro_ (1902), _A Noite do Calvario, A Mentira_ (in which a wife lies to her husband by the life of their child, who dies). The monotony of the rhymed couplets in _Leonor Telles_ is intensified in the work of Snr. HENRIQUE LOPES DE MENDONÇA (born in 1856). His verse is more declamatory, the use of strained _esdruxulo_ endings is carried so far that it becomes a mannerism and the verse often resembles a hurdle-race, the line running on smoothly to the obstacle at its end (_thalamo_--_cala-m’o_; _silencio_--_recompense-o_; _phantasma_--_faz-m’a_). This no doubt helps to increase the effect of hollow resonance. Nor is there a compensating skill in psychology. There is nothing subtle, for instance, in the characters of _O Duque de Vizeu_ (1886): the cruel João II, the timid Manuel, the high-minded Duke, and self-sacrificing Margarida. _A Morta_ (1891) deals with Pedro I’s justice and _saudade_ for the dead Inés. _Affonso d’Albuquerque_ (1898) has a tempting subject (handled previously by Costa Lobo in his play--also in verse--_Affonso d’Albuquerque_, 1886), but it is embarrassing to find the most unrhetorical of heroes, will of iron but not as here tongue of gold, solemnly haranguing in couplet after couplet, (although here, as in the other plays, the atmosphere of Portugal’s spacious days is well maintained): E em psalmos de christão se ha de mudar o cantico De Brahma, confundindo o Indico no Atlantico. It is perhaps a relief to turn to the prose plays, _O Azebre_ (1909, written in 1904), the interest of which centres in the artist Fidelio, _Nó Cego_ (1904), dealing with divorce, and especially to _O Salto Mortal_, which treats of more homely peasant affairs, and to the admirably natural fishermen’s scenes and dialogues enacted at Ericeira in the second half of the nineteenth century, in _Amor Louco_ (1899). The author succeeds in giving a more definite picture of a whole community here than of any of his individual heroes in high places. _A Herança_ (1913) also has the lives of fishermen for its subject. An equally slight but charming one-act piece in verse is _Saudade_ (1916), while the dramatist’s power of evoking past scenes is shown in the glowing historical tales of _Sangue Português_ (1920), _Gente Namorada_ (1921), and _Lanças n’Africa_ (1921).