Nothing is easier to forget than a play which has little more than cleverness to recommend it, and many of the pieces written by Calderón’s followers are clever to the last degree of tiresomeness. There is cleverness of a kind in _El Conde de Sex ó Dar la vida por su dama_, and, if there were any solid basis for the ascription of it to Philip IV., we should have to say that it was a very creditable performance for a king. But then kings in modern times have not greatly distinguished themselves in literature. You remember Boileau’s remark to Louis XIV.:—‘Votre Majesté peut tout ce qu’Elle veut faire: Elle a voulu faire de mauvais vers; Elle y a réussi.’ However, if _El Conde de Sex_ would do credit to a royal amateur, it would be a rather mediocre performance for a professional playwright like Antonio Coello, to whom also it is attributed. Coello was already known as a promising dramatist when Pérez de Montalbán wrote _Para todos_ in 1632, but we can scarcely say that his early promise was fulfilled. The air of courts does not encourage independence, and Coello, apparently distrustful of his powers, collaborated in several pieces with fellow-courtiers like Calderón, Vélez de Guevara and Rojas Zorrilla—notably with the two latter in _También la afrenta es veneno_, which dramatises the malodorous story of Leonor Telles (wife of Fernando I. of Portugal) and her first husband, João Lourenço da Cunha, _el de los cuernos de oro_. Shortly before he died in 1652 Coello had his reward by being made a member of the royal household, but he would now be forgotten were it not that he is said to be the real author of _Los Empeños de seis horas_ (_Lo que pasa en una noche_), which is printed in the eighth volume of the _Escogidas_ as a play of Calderón’s. Assuming that the ascription of it to Coello is correct, he becomes of some interest to us in England, for the play was adapted by Samuel Tuke under the title of _The Adventures of Five Hours_. This piece of Tuke’s made a great hit in London when it was printed in 1662; four years later Samuel Pepys confided to his diary that ‘when all is done, it is the best play that ever I read in all my life,’ and when he saw it acted a few days afterwards, he effusively declared that _Othello_ seemed ‘a mean thing’ beside it. There is a tendency to make the Spanish author—for Tuke adds little of his own—pay for Pepys’s extravagance. _Los Empeños de seis horas_ is nothing like a masterpiece, but it is a capital light comedy—neatly constructed, witty, brisk and entertaining. It is, indeed, so much better than anything else which bears Coello’s name that there is some hesitation to believe he wrote it. However, he has the combined authority of Barrera and Schaeffer in his favour, though neither of these oracles gives any reason to support the ascription.