[421] “Except six,” says Lope, at the end of his “Arte Nuevo,” “all my four hundred and eighty-three plays have offended gravely against the rules [el arte].” See Montiano y Luyando, “Discurso sobre las Tragedias Españolas,” (Madrid, 1750, 12mo, p. 47), and Huerta, in the Preface to his “Teatro Hespañol,” for the difficulty of finding even these six.
[422] Arte Nuevo de Hacer Comedias, Obras, Tom. IV. p. 406.
[423] “El Primer Rey de Castilla,” Comedias, Tom. XVII., Madrid, 1621, ff. 114, etc.
[424] “El Bastardo Mudarra,” Comedias, Tom. XXIV., Zaragoza, 1641.
[425] “La Limpieza no Manchada,” Comedias, Tom. XIX., Madrid, 1623.
[426] “El Nacimiento de Christo,” Comedias, Tom. XXIV., ut supra.
[427] It is the learned Theodora, a person represented as capable of confounding the knowing professors brought to try her, who declares Constantinople to be four thousand leagues from Madrid. La Donzella Teodor, end of Act II.
[428] This extraordinary disembarkation takes place in the “Animal de Ungria” (Comedias, Tom. IX., Barcelona, 1618, ff. 137, 138). One is naturally reminded of Shakspeare’s “Winter’s Tale”; but it is curious that the Duke de Luynes, a favorite minister of state to Louis XIII., made precisely the same mistake, at about the same time, to Lord Herbert of Cherbury, then (1619-21) ambassador in France. But Lope certainly knew better, and I doubt not Shakspeare did, however ignorant the French statesman may have been. Herbert’s Life, by himself, London, 1809, 8vo, p. 217.
[429] See “San Isidro Labrador,” in Comedias Escogidas, Tom. XXVIII., Madrid, 1667, f. 66.
[430] “San Nicolas de Tolentino,” Comedias, Tom. XXIV., Zaragoza, 1641, f. 171.