CASTRO, Guillen de (1569-1631), a Spanish dramatist of note, was a Valencian by birth, and early enjoyed a reputation as a man of letters. In 1591, with Aguilar and Artieda, 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 protégé 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 Osuña and the countduke 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 tournament 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) Engañarse Engαnαndο, (2) Pagar en propria Mοneda, and (3) La Justicia en la Piedad. But the drama that has made Guillen de Castro’s reputation European is Las Mοcedades 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 day.

See Schack, Geschichte der Dramatischen Literatur und Kunst in Spanien, ii. 428-449; Ticknor, History of Spanish Literature, ii. 300-309; Comedias de Guillen de Castro, Valencia, 1621; Lord Holland’s Lives of Lope de Vega and Guillen de Castro, London, 1817; Iiibadaneyra, Biblioteca de Autores Espaħoles, vol. xliii,

CASTRO, Inez de (died 1355), called Collo de Garza, i,e., “Heron’s Neck,” 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, Doña Aldonça Soares 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 Peñafiel, Inez grew up side by side with Costança, the duke’s daughter by a scion of the royal house of Aragon, and her own cousin. After refusing several crowned heads in marriage, Costança was at last persuaded to accept the hand of the Infante Dorn Pedro, son of Alphonse the Proud, king of Portugal. In 1341 the two girls left Peñafiel; Costança’s marriage was celebrated in the same year, and the young Infanta and her cousin went to reside at Lisbon, ør at Coimbra, where Dorn Pedro conceived that luckless 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 Costança. 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, Dorn 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 Costança’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 Dorn Pedro, then king of Portugal, swore solemnly to Castanhede, that he had been lawfully wedded to Inez; but in 1385 João De Regras had no difficulty whatever, in the absence of written evidence, in setting aside the title of her descendants 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 Gonçalves, 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 gentlemen 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 tremendous 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 Gonçalves 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; Fernão Lopes, the Portuguese 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 Alcobaça 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 mutilated, 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 misfortune. From her brother, however, Alvaro Perez de Castro, the house regnant of Portugal directly descends.

See Fernão Lopes, Chronica del Rey Dorn Pedro, 1735; Camoens, Os Lusiadas ; Antonio Ferreira’s Ines de Castro, — the first regular tragedy of the Renaissance after the Sofonisba of Trissino; Luis Velez de Guevara, Reinar despues de morir, an admirable play; and Ferdinand Denis, Chroniques Chevaleresques de l’Espagne et du Portugal.

CASTRO, Joao de (1500-1548), called by Camoens Castro Forte, fourth viceroy of the Portuguese Indies, was the son of Alvaro de Castro, civil governor of Lisbon. A younger son, and destined therefore for the church, he became at an early age a brilliant humanist, discover-also a profound capacity for mathematics. The latter he studied under Pedro Nunez, in company with the Infante Dorn Luis, son of Emmanuel the Great, with whom he contracted a life-long friendship. At eighteen he went to Tangiers, where he was dubbed knight by Duarte de Menezes the governor, and where he remained several years. In 1535 he accompanied Dorn Luis to the siege of Tunis, where he had the honour of refusing knighthood and reward at the hands of the great emperor Charles V. Returning to Lisbon, he received from the king the small commandership of São Pablo de Salvaterra in 1538. He was exceedingly poor, but his wife Lenor de Coutinho, a noble Portuguese lady, the exact date of whose marriage with him is not known, admired and appreciated her husband sufficiently to make light of their poverty. Soon after this he left for the Indies in company with his uncle Garcia de Noronha, and on his arrival at Goa enlisted among the aventureiros, “ the bravest of the brave,” told off for the relief of Diu. In 1540 he served on an expedition under Estabão de Gama, by whom his son, Alvaro de Castro, a child of thirteen, was knighted, out of compliment to him. Returning to Portugal, João de Castro was named commander of a fleet, in 1543, to clear the European seas of pirates; and in 1545 he was sent, with six sail, to the Indies, in the room of Martin de Souza, who had been dismissed the viceroyalty. The next three years were the hardest and most brilliant, as they were the last, of this great man’s life,—years of battle and struggle, of glory and sorrow, of suffering and triumph. Valiantly seconded by his sons (one of whom, Fernão, was killed before Diu) and by João Mascarenhas, João de Castro achieved such popularity by the overthrow of Mahmoud, king of Cambodia, by the relief of Diu, and by the defeat of the great army of Adhel Khan, that he could contract a very large loan with the Goa merchants on the simple security of his moustache. These great deeds were followed by the capture of Broach, by the complete subjugation of Malacca, and by the passage of Antonio Moniz into Ceylon; and in 1547 the great captain was appointed viceroy by João III., who had at last accepted him without mistrust. He did not live long to fill this charge, expiring in the arms of his friend, St Francis Xavier, 6th June of the following year. He was buried at Goa, but his remains were afterwards exhumed and conveyed to Portugal, to be reinterred under a splendid monument in the convent of Bemfica.

See Jacinto Freire de Andrade, Vida de D. JoaÒ de Castro, Lisbon, 1651,—English translation, by Sir Peter Wyche, 1664; João de Barros, Decada secunda da Asia, bk. viii.; Roteiro de Dom Joaιn de Castro, Paris, 1833. The last is important as fixing the position of João de Castro among geographers.