Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. II.djvu/269

245 ROMANTIC FICTION AND POETRY. 245 mysteries, or the pastoral dialogues which succeed- chapter ed them. The Spaniards, notwithstanding their — — precocity, compared with most of the nations of Europe, in dramatic art, were unaccountably tardy in all its histrionic accompaniments. The public remained content with such poor mummeries, as could be got up by strolling players and moun- tebanks. There was no fixed theatre in Madrid until the latter part of the sixteenth century ; and that consisted of a courtyard, with only a roof to shelter it, while the spectators sat on benches ranged around, or at the windows of the surround- ing houses. ^^ A similar impulse with that experienced by comic Tragic . . . drama. writing, was given to tragedy. The first that en- tered on this department were professed scholars, who adopted the error of the Italian dramatists, in fashioning their pieces servilely after the antique, instead of seizing the expression of their own age. The most conspicuous attempts in this way were made by Fernan Perez de Oliva. ^^ He was born 51 Pellicer, Origen de la Come- positions. (Moratin, Obras, torn, dia, torn. ii. pp. 58-62. — See i. pp. 150, 151. — Lampillas, Let- also American Quarterly Review, teratura Spagnuola, torn. v. dis. 1, no. viii. art. 3. sec. 5.) This patriotic litterateur 52 Gliva, Obras, (Madrid, 1787.) endeavours to establish the produc- — Vasco Diaz Tanco, a native of tionofOliva's tragedies in the year Estremadura, who flourished in the 1515, in the hope of antedating first half of the sixteenth century, that of Trissino's " Sophonisba," mentions in one of his works three composed a year later, and thus se- tragedies composed by himself on curing to his nation the palm of Scripture subjects. As there is no precedence, in time at least, though evidence, however, of their having it should be only for a few months, been printed, or performed, or even on the tragic theatre of modern read in manuscript by any one, Europe. Letteratura Spagnuola, they hardly deserve to be included ubi supra. in the catalogue of dramatic com-