WE think of Philip III's reign as the epoch of Don
Quixote, but Spaniards speak of it as the epoch of
Lope de Vega.

I suppose that Lope was the most prolific writer
who ever lived. He wrote verse and prose of all sorts:
sonnets, odes, lays, madrigals, ballads, epics, pas-
torals, hymns, stories, a novel, and what not, beside
eighteen hundred plays and four hundred and fifty
autos. It is said that he put on the stage seventeen
thousand characters or more. A Spanish critic says
that the reason why Lope, with intellectual genius
equal to Shakespeare's, is inferior, is that Shakespeare
always aimed before he shot, but that Lope fired
before taking aim.

Lope de Vega ( 1562-1635) was born in Madrid, of
parents in humble circumstances. He was as pre-
cocious as he was prolific; at the age of ten he trans-
lated Claudian's verses into Spanish, and at twelve
wrote his first comedy. In 1583 he served in a naval
expedition against the Azores, under the Marquis of
Santa Cruz, and a few years later he enlisted in the
Invincible Armada. But prior to this enlistment,
while he was composing comedies for the director of a
company of players, he fell in love with the director's
daughter. For four years she was his mistress and

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