Comedias, 21

As soon as his Part XX of comedies came out at the beginning of 1625, Lope must have already been thinking of publishing the XXI. But the Council of Castile, in March of that year, decided not to grant more licenses to print comedies or novels for moral reasons. The suspension, which would last for a decade, unleashed the illegal and apocryphal printing of comedies. Lope continued to write and, as an old man, when licenses were granted again, he had composed some of his masterpieces that he wanted to include in this Twenty-one part of him, claimed as true against those of unscrupulous printers. It included recent works and other older ones that he had perhaps considered printing long ago; tragedies such as La bella Aurora, mythological, and the one with a palatial setting, El castigo sin venganza, the palatine comedy of La boba para los otros y discreta para sí, the historical-dynastic tragicomedy El piadoso aragonés, historical dramas with cases of honor such as El mejor alcalde, el Rey, Los Tellos de Meneses and La victoria de la honra, but what he preferred were urban comedies: ¡Ay, verdades, que en amor...!, La noche de San Juan, Los bandos de Sena, El premio del bien hablar and Por la puente, Juana.