ack; and the "comedies" were
still only "dialogues, and a species of eclogues between two or three
shepherds and a shepherdess," enlivened at times by intermezzos of
favourite comic figures, such as the negress or the Biscayan, "played
with inconceivable talent and truthfulness by Lope." One of his plays at
least,[48] and one of Timoneda's,[49] seem to have been taken from an
Italian source; others mingled modern themes with classical
apparitions,[50] one of Timoneda's was (perhaps again through the
Italian) from Plautus.[51] Others of a slighter description were called
_pasos_,--a species afterwards termed _entremeses_ and resembling the
modern French _proverbes_. With these popular efforts of Lope de Rueda
and his friends a considerable dramatic activity began in the years
1560-1590 in several Spanish cities, and before the close of this period
permanent theatres began to be fitted up at Madrid. Yet Spanish dramatic
literature might still have been led to follow Italian into an imitation
of classical models. Two plays by G. Bermudez (1577), called by their
learned author "the first Spanish tragedies," treating the national
subject of Inez de Castro, but divided into five acts, composed in
various metres, and introducing a chorus; a _Dido_ (c. 1580) by C. de
Virues (who claimed to have first divided dramas into three _jornadas_);
and the tragedies of L. L. de Argensola (acted 1585, and praised in _Don
Quixote_) alike represent this tendency.

Cervantes.

Such were the alternatives which had opened for the Spanish drama, when
at last, about the same time as that of the English, its future was
determined by writers of original genius. The first of these was the
immortal Cervantes, who, however, failed to anticipate by his earlier
plays (1584-1588) the great (though to him unproductive) success of his
famous romance. In his endeavour to give a poetic character to the drama
he fell upon the expedient of introducing personified abstractions
speaking a "divine" or elevated language--a device which was for a time
favourably received. But these plays exhibit a neglect or ignorance of
the laws of dramatic construction; their action is episodical; and it is
from the realism of these episodes (especially in the _Numancia_, which
is crowded with both figures and incidents), and from the power and flow
of the declamation, that their effect must have been derived. When in
his later years (1615) Cervantes returned to dramatic co