Lope de Rueda is often called _el excelente poeta_, and his verse is exampled in the _Prendas de Amor_, as also in the _Diálogo sobre la Invención de las Calzas_. The _Farsa del Sordo_, included by the Marqués de la Fuensanta del Valle in his admirable new edition of Rueda's works, is almost certainly due to another hand. Cervantes commends Rueda's _versos pastoriles_, but these only reach us in the fragment which Cervantes himself quotes in _Los Baños de Argel_. Still, it is not as a poet that Rueda lives: he is rightly remembered as the patriarch of the Spanish stage. For his time and station he was well read: López Madera will have it that he knew Theocritus, and it may be so. More manifest are the Plautine touches in the _paso_ which Moratín names _El Rufián Cobarde_, with its bully, Sigüenza, a lineal descendant of the _Miles Gloriosus_. It has been inferred that, in choosing Italian themes, Rueda followed Torres Naharro. This gives a wrong impression, for his debt to the Italians is far more direct. The _Eufemia_ takes its root in the _Decamerone_, being identical in subject with _Cymbeline_; the _Armelina_ is compounded of Antonio Francesco Ranieri's _Attilia_, with Giovanni Maria Cecchi's _Servigiale_; the _Engaños_ is a frank imitation of Niccolò Secchi's _Commedia degli Inganni_; and the _Medora_ is conveyed straight from Gigio Arthenio Giancarli's _Zingara_.[8] Neither in his fragments of verse nor in his Italian echoes is the true Rueda revealed. His historic importance lies in his invention of the _paso_—a dramatic interlude turning on some simple episode: a quarrel between Torubio and his wife Águeda concerning the price of olives not yet planted, an invitation to dinner from the penniless licentiate Xaquima. Rueda's most spirited work is given in the _Deleitoso Compendio_ (1567) and in the _Registro de Representantes_ (1570), both published by his friend, Juan de Timoneda. In a longer flight the effect is less pleasing; the prose _Coloquio de Camila_ and its fellow, the _Coloquio de Timbria_, are long _pasos_, complicated in development and not drawn to scale. Still, even here there is a keen dramatic sense of situation; while the comic extravagance of the themes—farcical incidents in picaresque surroundings—is set off by spirited dialogue and vigorous style. Rueda had clearly read the _Celestina_ to his profit; and his prose, with its archaic savour, is of great purity and power. The patriotic Lista comes as near flat blasphemy as a good Spaniard may by mentioning Rueda in the same breath as Cervantes, and that the latter learned much from his predecessor is manifest; but the point need be pressed no further. Considerable as were Rueda's positive qualities of gay wit and inventive resource, his highest merit lies in this, that he laid the foundation-stone of the actual Spanish theatre, and that his dramatic system became a capital factor in his people's intellectual history.