erary and artistic expressions; they also
perhaps derived from the same source a not less characteristically
refined treatment of the passion of love. The ideas of Spanish
chivalry--more especially religious devotion and a punctilious sense of
personal honour--asserted themselves (according to a process often
observable in the history of civilization) with peculiar distinctness in
literature and art, after the period of great achievements to which they
had contributed in other fields had come to an end. The ripest glories
of the Spanish drama belong to an age of national decay--mindful, it is
true, of the ideas of a greater past. The chivalrous enthusiasm
pervading so many of the masterpieces of its literature is indeed a
distinctive feature of the Spanish nation in all, even in the least
hopeful, periods of its later history; and the religious ardour breathed
by these works, though associating itself with what is called the
Catholic Reaction, is in truth only a manifestation of the spirit which
informed the noblest part of the Reformation movement itself. The
Spanish drama neither sought nor could seek to emancipate itself from
views and forms of religious life more than ever sacred to the Spanish
people since the glorious days of Ferdinand and Isabella; and it is not
so much in the beginnings as in the great age of Spanish dramatic
literature that it seems most difficult to distinguish between what is
to be termed a religious and what a secular play. After Spain had thus,
the first after England among modern European countries, fully unfolded
that incomparably richest expression of national life and sentiment in
an artistic form--a truly national dramatic literature,--the terrible
decay of her greatness and prosperity gradually impaired the strength of
a brilliant but, of its nature, dependent growth. In the absence of high
original genius the Spanish dramatists began to turn to foreign models,
though little supported in such attempts by popular sympathy; and it is
only in more recent times that the Spanish drama has sought to reproduce
the ancient forms from whose masterpieces the nation had never become
estranged, while accommodating them to tastes and tendencies shared by
later Spanish literature with that of Europe at large.

Early efforts.

Gil Vicente.

The earlier dramatic efforts of Spanish literature may without
inconvenience be briefly dismissed. The reputed author of the _Coplas de
Mingo Revulgo_ (