The earliest known writer for the stage among the moderns was, as we have already said, Gómez Manrique; but earlier spectacles are frequently mentioned in fifteenth-century chronicles. These may be divided into _entremeses_, a term loosely applied to balls and tourneys, accompanied by chorus-singing; and into _momos_, entertainments which took on a more literary character, and which found excuses for dramatic celebrations at Christmas and Eastertide. Gómez Manrique had made a step forward, but his pieces are primitive and fragmentary compared to those of JUAN DEL ENCINA (1468-1534). A story given in the scandalous _Pleito del Manto_ reports that Encina was the son of Pero Torrellas, and another idle tale declares him to be Juan de Tamayo. The latter is proved a blunder; the former is discredited by Encina's solemn cursing of Torrellas. Encina passed from the University of Salamanca to the household of the Duke of Alba (1493), was present next year at the siege of Granada, and celebrated the victory in his _Triunfo de fama_. Leaving for Italy in 1498, he is found at Rome in 1502, a favourite with that Spanish Pope, Alexander VI. He returned to Spain, took orders, and sang his first mass at Jerusalem in 1519, at which date he was appointed Prior of the Monastery of León. He is thought to have died at Salamanca. Encina began writing in his teens, and has left us over a hundred and seventy lyrics, composed before he was twenty-five years old. Nearly eighty pieces, with musical settings by the author, are given in Asenjo Barbieri's _Cancionero Musical_. His songs, when undisfigured by deliberate conceits, are full of devotional charm. Still, Encina abides with us in virtue of his eclogues, the first two being given in the presence of his patrons at Alba de Tormes, probably in 1492. His plays are fourteen in number, and were undoubtedly staged. Ticknor would persuade us that the seventh and eighth, though really one piece, "with a pause between," were separated by the poet "in his simplicity." Even Encina's simplicity may be overstated, and Ticknor's "pause" must have been long: for the seventh eclogue was played in 1494, and the eighth in 1495. His eclogues are eclogues only in name, being dramatic presentations of primitive themes, with a distinct but simple action. The occasion is generally a feast-day, and the subject is sometimes sacred. Yet not always so: the _Égloga de Fileno_ dramatises the shepherd's passion for Lefira, and ends with a suicide suggested by the _Celestina_. In like wise, Encina's _Plácida y Vitoriano_, involving two attempted suicides and one scabrous scene, introduces Venus and Mercury as characters. Again, the _Aucto del Repelón_ dramatises the adventures in the market-place of two shepherds, Johan Paramas and Piernicurto; while _Cristino y Febea_ exhibits the ignominious downfall of a would-be hermit in phrases redolent of Cota's _Diálogo_. Simple as the motives are, they are skilfully treated, and the versification,