The ballade is to be found in two nineteenth century French plays, the 'Gringoire' of Théodore de Banville, and the 'Cyrano de Bergerac' of Rostand; but in both these pieces it is frankly presented as what it is,--a poem composed in the fixt form by the hero of the play. Maccoll suggests that sonnets were introduced by the Spanish playwright "to please the more cultivated part of the audience"; and he remarks that "from their nature [they] could be employed sparingly--not more than two or three sonnets were usually put into a play." He notes that in one of Calderon's pieces, 'Gustos y Disgustos' a duenna who is in doubt as to her immediate duty, begins her speech "by saying that she must either indulge in a soliloquy or pronounce a sonnet. She elects the former, and proceeds to soliloquize in _redondillas_." 28. Lord Holland has turned these lines into English couplets: None than myself more barbarous or more wrong, Who hurried by the vulgar taste along, Dare give my precepts in despite of rule. When France and Italy pronounce me fool. But what am I to do? who now of plays, With one complete within these seven days, Four hundred eighty-three in all have writ, And all, save six, against the rules of wit. It needs to be recorded that Lope's commentators have been sadly put to it in their endeavor to identify the half dozen of Lope's plays which he here claims to be in accord with the theories of the Classicists. Attention has been called also to the similarity of attitude between Lope here and that taken by Webster in the preface to his 'White Devil,' published in 1612, only three years after the Spanish poem had been delivered:--"If it be objected that this is no true Dramatic Poem, I shall easily confess it; _non potes in nugas dicere plura meas Ipse ego quam dixi_; willingly, and not ignorantly, in this kind have I faulted; for should a man present to such an Auditory the most contentious Tragedy that ever was written, observing all the critical laws, as height of style and gravity of person, enrich it with the sententious chorus, and, as it were, life 'n Death in the passionate and weighty Nuntius, yet after all this divine rapture, _O dura messorum ilia_, the breath that comes from the incapable multitude is able to poison it; and ere it be acted, let the author resolve to fix to every scene this of Horace, _Haec Porcis hodie comedenda relinques._" B. M. OF THIS BOOK THREE HUNDRED AND THIRTY-THREE COPIES WERE PRINTED FROM TYPE BY CORLIES, MACY AND COMPANY IN NOVEMBER : MCMXIV PUBLICATIONS _of the_ Dramatic Museum OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK _First Series_ Papers on Playmaking: I THE NEW ART OF WRITING PLAYS. By Lope de Vega. Translated by William T. Brewster. With an Introduction and Notes by Brander Matthews. II THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PLAY. By Bronson Howard. With an Introduction by Augustus Thomas.