GUILLEN DE

CASTRO Y BELLVIS (1569-1631)  , Spanish dramatist, was a Valencian by birth, and early enjoyed a reputation as a man of letters . In 1591 he became a member of a local literary academy called the Nocturnes . At one time a captain of the coast-guard, at another the protege of Benavente, viceroy of Naples, who appointed him governor of Scigliano, patronized by Osuna and Olivares, Castro was nominated a knight of the order of Santiago in 1623 . He settled at Madrid in 1626, and died there on the 28th of July 1631 in such poverty that his funeral expenses were defrayed by charity . He probably made the acquaintance of Lope de Vega at the festivals (1620-1622) held to commemorate the beatification and canonization of St Isidore, the patron saint of Madrid . On the latter occasion Castro's octavas were awarded the first prize . Lope de Vega dedicated to him a celebrated play entitled Las Almenas discovered by Dr M . Treub (see Annal . Jardin Botan.Buitenzorg, x . 1891), and is associated with a peculiar development of the ovule, and an increased number and peculiar form of the embryo-sacs (nacrospores) . Treub proposed to separate Casuarina as a distinct group of Angiosperms, and suggested the following arrangement: de Toro (1619), and when Castro's Comedias were published in 1618-021 he dedicated the first volume to Lope de Vega's daughter . The drama that has made Castro's reputation is Las Mocedades del Cid (1599?), to the first part of which Corneille was largely indebted for the materials of his tragedy .

The two parts of this play, like all those by Castro, have the genuine

ring of the old romances; and, from their intense nationality, no less than for their primitive poetry and flowing versification, were among the most popular pieces of their day . Castro's Fuerza de la costumbre is the source of Love's Care, a play ascribed to Fletcher . He is also the reputed author of El Prodigio de los Mantes, from which Calderon derived El Magico prodigioso . Las Mocedades del Cid (Toulouse, 189o) and Ingratitud de amor (Philadelphia, 1899) have been well edited by E . Merim6e and H . A . Rennert respectively .