[378] “El Cardenal de Belen,” Comedias, Tom. XIII., Madrid, 1620.
[379] This play is not in the collection of Lope’s Comedias, but it is in Lord Holland’s list. My copy of it is an old one, without date, printed for popular use at Valladolid.
[380] Comedias, Tom. I., Valladolid, 1604, ff. 91, etc.
[381] “Bautismo del Príncipe de Marruecos,” in which there are nearly sixty personages. Comedias, Tom. XI., Barcelona, 1618, ff. 269, etc. C. Pellicer, Orígen del Teatro, Tom. I. p. 86.
[382] C. Pellicer, Orígen, Tom. I. p. 153.
[383] “San Nicolas de Tolentino,” Comedias, Tom. XXIV., Zaragoza, 1641, ff. 167, etc. Each act, as is not uncommon in the old Spanish theatre, is a sort of separate play, with its separate list of personages prefixed. The first has twenty-one; among which are God, the Madonna, History, Mercy, Justice, Satan, etc. It opens with a masquerading scene in a public square, of no little spirit; immediately after which we have a scene in heaven, containing the Divine judgment on the soul of one who had died in mortal sin; then another spirited scene, in a public square, among loungers, with a sermon from a fervent, fanatical monk; and afterwards, successive scenes between Nicholas, who has been moved by this sermon to enter a convent, and his family, who consent to his purpose with reluctance; the whole ending with a dialogue of the rudest humor between Nicholas’s servant, who is the buffoon of the piece, and a servant-maid, to whom he was engaged to be married, but whom he now abandons, determined to follow his master into a religious seclusion, which, at the same time, he is making ridiculous by his jests and parodies. This is the first act. The other two acts are such as might be anticipated from it.
[384] This is not either of the plays ordered by the city of Madrid, to be acted in the open air in 1622, in honor of the canonization of San Isidro, and found in the twelfth volume of Lope’s Obras Sueltas; though, on a comparison with these last, it will be seen that it was used in their composition. It, in fact, was printed five years earlier, in the seventh volume of Lope’s Comedias, Madrid, 1617, and continued long in favor, for it is reprinted in Parte XXVIII. of “Comedias Escogidas de los Mejores Ingenios,” Madrid, 1667, 4to.
[385] A spirited ballad or popular song is sung and danced at the young Saint’s wedding, beginning,—
Al villano se lo dan
La cebolla con el pan.