To show what these types and this action were in general terms would be easy enough, but perhaps a better, and certainly a more entertaining, method is to take half-a-dozen typical plays, and to give such an analysis of them as may enable the reader to appreciate for himself that skilful construction of plot at which the Spaniards aimed, and to judge how far it is true that however much the subject differed, the _dramatis personæ_ did not greatly vary. For this purpose it is not necessary to take what is best but what is most characteristic. I have selected as an example of the comedy of lively complicated action the _Dama Melindrosa_, which may be translated ‘My Lady’s Vapours,’ by Lope de Vega; as a romantic play, the _Tejedor de Segovia_--‘The Weaver of Segovia’--by Juan Ruiz de Alarcon; as a religious play, the _Condenado por Desconfiado_--‘Damned for want of Faith’--of Tirso de Molina; for the play which has “honour” for its motive, the _A Secreto Agravio Secreta Venganza_--‘A Secret Vengeance for a Hidden Wrong’--of Calderon. The _Dama Melindrosa_ draws a little towards the _comedia de figuron_, but it is none the less a perfect specimen of the cloak-and-sword comedy, and a good example of Lope. It is chosen also because it possesses a plot sufficiently entangled to show the Spanish _enredo_ (_i.e._, tangle), and yet not so complicated as to be obscure in the telling. Specimens of the romantic, and religious, play might have been easily found in Calderon, but to show the general quality of a literature, we must not confine ourselves to the greater men. There remain the _auto sacramental_, and the short interludes, which under various names surrounded, and enlivened, the _comedia_. For the first we must go to Calderon, and none seems more fit to show what the Renaissance had done with these survivals of the Middle Ages than the _Verdadero Dios Pan_--‘The True God Pan.’ For an example of the smaller pieces we can take the _Dos Habladores_--‘The Two Chatterers’--of Cervantes, who excelled in this, and only in this, dramatic form.[35] [SN: La Dama Melindrosa.]