Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 5.djvu/214

202 fortified, and greatly improved. The most remarkable buildings are the castle and the hermitage of Santa Ana. Its fisheries are considerable, and iron-ore and calamine are exported. Population, 3391.  CASTRO, (1569-1631), a Spanish dra matist of note, was a Valencian by birth, and early enjoyed a reputation as a man of letters. In 1591, with Aguilar and Artietla, he was a member of the Nocturnos, a brilliant Spanish imitation of the Italian Accademia. At one time a captain of horse, at another the protege of the munificent Benevente, viceroy of Naples, of whom he received the governorship of a Neapolitan fortress, patronized and splendidly pensioned by the duke of Osuna and the count- duke Olivarez, Guillen de Castro would seem to have made friends with his pen as quickly and as easily as he unmade them by his sour humour and discontented obstinacy. Little is known of the literary part of his life. He lived at Madrid, and wrote for the stage. It is certain, too, that he long enjoyed the friendship of Lope de Vega, who dedicated a play to him in flattering terms, and whom he assisted at the famous festival of the Canonization of San Isidro, where he won a prize in the literary tourna ment contested by Jauregui, Calderon, Juan de Montalvan, and others. He is said, moreover, to have died in such poverty as to have owed his funeral to charity. Guillen de Castro wrote some forty plays, in all of which he showed himself a follower of Lope de Vega, and a thorough Spaniard in instinct and idea, and in some of which great passions and stirring scenes are treated worthily and well. The best of them are perhaps (1) Engaiiarse Engaiiando, (2) Pagar en propria Jfoneda, and (3) La Justicia en la Piedad. But the drama that has made Guillen de Castro s reputation European is Las Mocedades del Cid, to the first part of which Corneille was so largely indebted for the materials of his own renowned tragedy. The two parts of this play, like all those of Castro, have the genuine ring of the old songs of the Romanceros about them ; and, from their intense nationality, no less than for their rough poetry and sweet versification, were, doubtless, among the most popular pieces of their clay.

1em  CASTRO, (died 1355), called Collo de Garza, i.e., &quot; Heron s Neck,&quot; was born in Spanish Galicia, in the earlier years of the 14th century. Tradition asserts that her father, Don Pedro Fernandez de Castro, and her mother, Dona Aldo^a Scares de Villadares, a noble Portuguese lady, were unmarried, and that Inez and her two brothers were consequently of bastard birth. Educated at the semi-Oriental provincial court of Juan Manuel, duke of Penafiel, Inez grew up side by side with Costanc.a, the duke s daughter by a scion of the royal house of Aragon, and her own cousin. After refusing several crowned heads in marriage, Costanca was at last persuaded to accept the hand of the Infante Dom Pedro, son of Alphonso the Proud, king of Portugal. In 1341 the tvo girls left Penafiel; Costanca s marriage was celebrated in the same year, and the young Infanta and her cousin went to reside at Lisbon, or at Coimbra, where Dom Pedro conceived that luck less and furious passion for Inez which has immortalized them. Morganatic marriages among the great were rather the rule than the exception in those times. The only person, therefore, who suffered in the contemplation of the lawless alliance between the Infante and Inez was Costanga. In 1345, however, the Infanta died in childbed, and the widower was left in undisturbed possession of his mistress. A wayward violent man, bold and irresolute, of terrible passions, but subject to strange lapses of will, Dom Pedro, doubtful, perhaps, of the illegitimacy of Inez, which debarred her from succession to the throne, took no steps to improve her position in the world s eye till 1354, nine years after Costana s death, when he married her in presence of the bishop of Guarda, and of several of the members of their household. No contract of marriage, however, nor documentary proof of any kind was created for this extraordinary occasion. In 1361 Dom Pedro, then king of Portugal, swore solemnly to Castanhede, that he had been lawfully wedded to Inez; but in 1385 Joao De Regras had no difficulty whatever, in the absence of written evidence, in setting aside the title of her descend ants to the throne. Alphonso the Proud feared for his grandchild and his kingdom s peace. The Castro family, as much dreaded in Spain as in Portugal, with Inez ready to mount the throne and her brother Pedro Fernandez de Castro rising daily higher in popularity and importance, had many enemies, among others, three gentlemen, Alvaro Gongalves, Pedro Coelho, and Diogo Lopes Pacheco. These men, hateful to and fearful of Pedro Fernandez, are said to have used their influence with Alphonso to persuade him to strike down the family through Inez. The old king listened, refused, wavered, and ended by yielding. He went in secret to the palace at Coimbra, where Inez and the Infante resided, accompanied by his three familiars, and by others who agreed with them. The beauty and tears of Inez disarmed his resolution, and he turned to leave her ; but the gentle men about him had gone too far to recede. Inez was stabbed to death, and was buried immediately in the Church of Santa Clara. The Infante raised at once the flag of revolt against his father, and was only appeased by the concession of a large share in the government. The three murderers of Inez were sent out of the kingdom by Alphonso, who knew his son too well not to be aware that the vengeance would be tremen dous as the crime. They took refuge in Castile, In 1357, however, Alphonso died, and the Infante was crowned king of Portugal. Pedro the Cruel, his nephew, reigned over Castile ; and the murderers were given up as soon ! as required, Diogo Lopes escaped through the gratitude of a beggar to whom he had formerly done a kindness ; but Coelho and Gonc.alves were executed, with horrible tortures, in the very presence of the king. The story of the exhumation and coronation of the corpse of Inez has often been told. It is said that to the dead body, crowned and robed in royal raiment, and enthroned beside the king, the assembled nobility of Portugal paid homage as to its queen, swearing fealty on the withered hand of the corpse. The gravest doubts, however, exist as to the authenticity of this story ; Fernao Lopes, the Portu guese Froissart, who is the great authority for the details of the tragedy of the death of Inez, with some of the actors in which he was personally acquainted, says nothing of the ghastly and fantastic ceremony, though he tells at length the tale of the funeral honours that Pedro the king bestowed upon his wife. Inez was buried at Alcobaca with extraordinary magnificence, in a tomb of white marble, surmounted by her crowned statue ; and near her sepulchre Pedro caused his own to be placed. The monument, after repeatedly resisting the violence of curiosity, was broken into in 1810 by the French soldiery; the statue was muti lated, and the yellow hair was cut from the broken skeleton, to be preserved in reliquaries and blown away by the wind. The children of Inez shared her habit of mis fortune. From her brother, however, Alvaro Perez de Castro, the house regnant of Portugal directly descends.