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From the gradas and barandillas, from the windows and desvanes, from all the seats, but especially from those which filled the patio, there must have gone forth then amid clamorous applause a unanimous shout of admiration, of enthusiasm, and very just national pride. "¡Vítor, Lope!" shrieked that tumultuous multitude time and again. "Long live el Fénix de los ingenios!

Lope de Vega found the Spanish drama a mass of incongruities without form, preponderating influence, or type, he left it in every detail a well-organized, national drama, so perfect that, though his successors polished it, they added nothing to its form. When or how he began this great work, it is not certain. He says in his works that he wrote plays as early as his eleventh year and conceived them even younger, and we have one of his plays, El Verdadero Amante, written, as has been mentioned, when he was twelve, but corrected and published many years later. Of all his plays written before his banishment, little is known but it is natural to suppose that they resembled in a measure the works of predecessors, for this period must be considered the apprenticeship of Lope. Though written for the author's pleasure, they were evidently numerous, for Cervantes says that Lope de Vega "filled the world with his own comedias, happily and judiciously planned, and so many that they covered more than ten thousand sheets." That his merit was soon appreciated is evident from the fact that theatrical managers were anxious to have these early compositions and that during his banishment he supported himself and family in Valencia by selling plays and probably kept the best troupes of the land stocked with his works alone. Of the number of his works the figures are almost incredible. In El Peregrino en su Patria, published in 1604, he gives a list of his plays, which up to that time numbered two hundred and nineteen; in 1609 he says, in El Arte Nuevo de hacer Comedias, that the number was then four hundred and eighty-three; in prologues or prefaces of his works Lope tells us that he had written eight hundred plays in 1618, nine hundred in 1619 and one thousand and seventy in 1625. In the

So the style like the action never settles in dull monotony, which, be it ever so beautiful, ends by wearying the audience. The great master put diversion into every thought and filled the listener with rapture by the versatility and beauty of his inimitable style. One of the secrets of Lope's influence over his contemporaries is to be found in his versification.