Setting aside these primitive humours, it is impossible to deny that Torres Naharro has a positive, as well as an historic value. His versification, always in the Castilian octosyllabic metre, with no trespassing on the Italian hendecasyllabic, is neat and polished, and, though far from splendid, lacks neither sweetness nor speed; his dialogue is pointed, opportune, dramatic; his characters are observed and are set in the proper light. His verses entitled the _Lamentaciones de Amor_ are in the old, artificial manner; his satirical couplets on the clergy are vigorous and witty attacks on the general life of Rome; his devout songs are neither better nor worse than those of his contemporaries; and his sonnets—two in Italian, one in a mixture of Italian and Latin—are mere curiosities of no real worth, yet they testify to the writer's uncommon versatility. Versatile Torres Naharro unquestionably was, and his gift serves him in the plays for which he is remembered. He is the first Spaniard to realise his personages, to create character on the boards; the first to build a plot, to maintain an interest of action by variety of incident, to polish an intrigue, to concentrate his powers within manageable limits, to view stage-effects from before the curtain. In a word, Torres Naharro knew the stage, its possibilities, and its resources. For his own age and for his opportunities he knew it even too well; and his _Himenea_—the theme of which is the love of Himeneo for Febea, with the interposition of Febea's brother, petulant as to the "point of honour"—is an isolated masterpiece, unrivalled till the time of Lope de Vega. The accident that Torres Naharro's _Propaladia_ was printed in Italy; the misfortune that its Spanish reprints were tardy, and that his plays were too complicated for the primitive resources of the Spanish stage: these delayed the development of the Spanish theatre by close on a century. Yet the fact remains: to find a match for the _Himenea_ we must pass to the best of Lope's pieces.