Italy,— Though Italy, as the home of the Renaissance, was the first of European nations to experience a revival of the drama under humanistic influence, the varied irhitations and experiments of the 15th and 16th centuries failed to result in a national drama of importance. The commedia dell' arte, comedy of masks, con tinued to hold popular favor, and the rappre sentasione sacra had an early successor in Poli tian's (Orfeo) (1502) ; but in the main the medi anal forms were discarded. Neither tragedy, though attempted by Dolce, Giraldi Cinthio and others of international reputation in their own day, nor comedy, which attracted to its services Aretino, Machiavelli and Ariosto, achieved, with a few exceptions, either literary Or dramatic excellence. More distinctly national in character and of wider influence on other literature than either tragedy or comedy was a new dramatic genre, the pastoral. It had an early beginning in Politian's (Orfeo,) and the (Arninta) of Tama and (I1 Pastor Fido> of Guarini created a dramatic form for the pastoral tradition so powerful in the Renaissance.
In the 17th century tragedies and pastoral continued in abundance, but not until the century was the Italian drama again of European importance. Maffeo's (1714) attracted European recognition, and the operas of Apostoig Zeno and Metastasio at tained literary rank and vast popularity. The commedia arse, which had spread beyond Italy and was maintaining itself in Paris, took a new departure in the dramatized fairy tales of Carlo Gozzi (1720-1808). Meantime Goldoni revived class 1 comedy of manners, waged war on the co media dell' one and won for himself the title of the Italian Moliere. The tragedies of Alfieri (1744-1803) also won a European reputatio and resulted in a contin uance of classical, tragedy. This achievement of the 18th century was largely under the in fluence of French taste, and the reaction to other models was felt in Italy as elsewhere under the impulse of the Romantic movement. The influence of Shakespeare, perceptible in the classic tragedies of Monti and Foscolo, be came marked in the Romantic innovations of Manzoni (fl. 1820). During the middle of the century the popular plays of Pietro Corsa illus trate the general progress in technic, and at the blose of the century the work of D'Annunzio and others gave new promise for the poetic drama.
Spain.— The Renaissance resulted in a more-complete survival of medieval conditions of the drama in Spain than in any other nation of Europe. The imitative attempts of the humanists made little impression on the public; and the real founder of the Spanish theatre, Lope de Rueda (fl. 1558), though not unin fluenced by classic and Italian literature, was a practical playwright who wrote for small travel ing companies and adapted the current medieval forms to please the taste of an illiterate public.
Most notable of his dramatic forms was the paso,.an interlude presenting some simple inci dent. He had numerous successors, including Juan de la Cueva, who declared open warfare against Seneca and chose national themes, and the great Cervantes, who wrote plays without much success. Toward the end of the 16th cen tury the great period of the Spanish drama be gins with the career of Lope de Vega. In the course of his lifetime the theatre was firmly established at Madrid, professional activity im proved, the national characteristics of the drama determined, and the plays of Lope awarded a popularity greater than that ever won by any dramatist before or since. The number of his plays almost passes belief, rising perhaps to 1,800 full-length plays without counting many shorter entertainments, and it is on record that he composed an entire play in a single day. His work is consequently marked by carelessness and repetition; it is often hardly more than im provisation, but criticism itself is breathless when it considers the variety of his invention and the cleverness of his technic. He made use of -every kind of subject, religious, heroic, ro mantic or realistic; and attempted with success every form of current drama, tragedy, history, miracle, morality, pastoral, and most notably of all, the comedia de capo y espada, the cloak and sword play. The use of the apoint of honor)) as a motive in these plays of gallantry and intrigue, the importance given ,to women in the action and the employment of the gracioso, a comic servant of the type of- which Sancho Panza is the great representative, are a few of the contributions dye mainly to Lope's in vention; but it is useless to analyze his contri butions to a drama that he practically made anew.
The height of Lope's activity was at the be ginning of the 17th century, and the great pe riod of Spanish drama continued until the death of Calderon in 1681. In Calderon the national drama reached its acme. Less of a creative genius than Lope and inferior to him as a play wright, he had the advantage of a generation of theatrical and dramatic progress and he pos sessed great genius as a lyric as well as a dra matic poet. The themes of loyalty to the king, devotion to the Church and the point of honor receive greater emphasis in his hands than they had before; in fact, a narrowness of motives and a sameness of character detract somewhat from the dramatic power of his plays. Perhaps his genius is the most characteristically dis played in his brief allegorical expositions of the miracle of transubstantiation performed on Corpus Christi day, and late successors of the old religious drama.