1 Castilian Literature

Among the earliest examples in verse are the Representaciones and Eglogas of Juan del Enzina, many of which were written for performance before the duke of Alba and end with lyrical villan cicos set to music by the author himself. The Cancionero con taining most of his works was printed in 1496. Among his Nativity, Passion and Resurrection plays, the Auto del Repelon stands in curious contrast, its subject being the relation between "town" and "gown" in the University of Salamanca. His shep herds and peasants have become comic characters, speaking a definite rustic dialect (sayagues) which afterwards became a dramatic convention. In imagination, plot, characterization, and a sense of the stage, he was surpassed by his Portuguese con temporary, Gil Vicente, I I of whose 43 plays are written entirely in Spanish. His lyrics are the gems of Spanish poetry of the period; his vivid, plastic representation of allegory looks forward to Calderon. The Barca da gloria (a ship in, which all the pas sengers are dead) suggests an English play of the 2oth century, while the Auto da sibilla Cassandra has a psychological intere3t un surpassed by any play of its period : the heroine refused to marry, believing herself destined to become the mother of God. Bar tolome de Torres Naharro, who settled at Naples, had a greater sense of the stage than Enzina, and more technique in the man agement of dialogue. He also had a sense of humour. While his Comedia soldadesca (1517) satirizes an army of occupation, his Tinellaria is the comedy of the servants' hall in the palace of a Roman cardinal, where the mixture of languages must have sounded irresistibly comic when brought on to the stage, how ever tiresome it may be to a modern reader. His Aquilana and Calamita (152o) look forward to the romantic, novelesque plays of Lope de Vega; Seraphim and Imenea foreshadowed the comedy of cloak and sword. Torres Naharro wrote for a private Italian stage and an audience of cardinals.

The public stage in Spain is first known from the works of Lope de Rueda (d. 1565; not to be confused with Lope de Vega), a famous travelling showman who had been inspired by the vivid acting of a company of Italian players, touring Spain with Commedia dell' arte. His longer plays (six in prose, three in verse) are mainly founded on Italian originals. His comic prose pasos (interludes performed during the pauses of other plays), though admirable as examples of the actual spoken Spanish of the period, lose the reason for their existence without the tradi tional and often obscene comic business and "gag" with which they must inevitably have been presented. Lope de Rueda was, in his turn, an inspiration to Cervantes, who afterwards described his simple staging and properties, and whose own Interludes (entremeses) whether in verse or prose, are masterpieces in the style. The prose theatre in Spain developed no further until the 18th century. The first dramatist to realize what might be made of the Romancero in the theatre (although he never used the actual metre of the romances) was Juan de la Cueva, whose plays were printed in 1583. With Lope de Vega and his followers, however, the Romancero was brought bodily on to the public stage, and in Las Mocedades del Cid (1618) of Guillen de Castro, ballad-characters from the cycle of the Cid's youth come on to the stage and recite the romances in which they occur. The plays

of Cervantes belong to an earlier and, as he believed, a better tradition; had they been written in prose they might have received more of the attention which they deserve.

Fiction.

The masterpiece of the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella is a novel in dialogue form, the Tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea generally known as the Celestina. The authorship is uncertain. First printed, it seems, in the Celestina ran through numerous editions in Spain and has been translated into most European languages (English, by James Mabbe 1631) while it has given rise to innumerable sequels and imitations. In con ception, it is a tragedy worthy of Shakespeare, in execution admirable dialogue is one more example of the blending of the popular with the erudite. Like Shakespeare, the author of the Celestina has fully developed the personalities of even the minor characters; while the stark realism of the whole story, particularly in the surroundings of La Celestina herself, has had an influence on European literature which can hardly be exaggerated. Another work of fiction had a long line of successors and an English trans lation; the Historia del Abencerrage y la hermosa Xarifa, a tale of Moors and Christians by an unknown writer of the time of Ferdi nand and Isabella, which eventually found its way into the Diana of Montemayor (d. 1561), the first Spanish example of the pas toral novel introduced from Italy. (J. B. T.) Classic Age, 16th and 17th Centuries.—The golden age of Spanish literature belongs to the 16th and 17th centuries, extend ing approximately from 155o to 165o. Previous to the reign of the Catholic sovereigns there exists, strictly speaking, only a Cas tilian literature, largely influenced by imitation first of France and then of Italy; the union of the two crowns of Aragon and Castile, and afterwards the advent of the house of Austria and the king of Spain's election as emperor, achieved the political unity of Spain and the unity of Spanish literature. After the death of Philip IV. (1665) the light went out ; the nation, exhausted by wars and bad administration, produced nothing; it fell again under the influence of France.

Poetry.

Lyric poetry, especially that of the more ambitious order, was generally inspired by the Italian masters. Juan Boscan, Garcilaso de la Vega and Diego Hurtado de Mendoza wrote al itdlico modo. The defects of Boscan and Mendoza (such as certain faults of rhythmic accentuation) were corrected by their disciples Gutierre de Cetina, Gregorio Silvestre, Hernando de Acufia, by the poets of the so-called school of Seville, headed by Fernando de Herrera and also by those of the rival school of Sala manca, rendered famous mainly by the inspired poetry of Luis de Leon. Against these innovators the poets, faithful to the old Castilian manner, the rhymers of redondillas and romances, held their own; under the direction of Cristobal de Castillejo, they car ried on a fierce war against the "Petrarchists." But by the last third of the 16th century the Italian school had triumphed.