The language is free from extraneous ornament; tender elevated, and impassioned. It is impossible to read it without being moved by the depth and energy of its pathos. The second play, the subject of which is the vengeance the infante don Pedro took on her murderers when he ascended the throne, is a great falling off from the other. The plot is deficient--the dialogue tiresomely long--and the catastrophe, though historically true, at once horrible and unpoetic. Besides these more classical productions, there were written various imitations of Celestina. They were all moral, for they all displayed in an elaborate manner the course of vice, and its punishment. Long drawn out--too real in their representation of vulgar crime, they neither interested on the stage, nor pleased in the closet. The greatest obscurity has enveloped the earliest regular dramas written in Spanish. They were the work of Bartolomé Torres Naharro, a native of Estremadura, and a priest. Torres Naharro was born in the little town of Tore, near Badajos, on the frontiers of Portugal. Little is known of him, except his reputation as a man of learning. After a shipwreck, which involved him in various adventures, he arrived at Rome, during the pontificate of Leo X., and was patronised by that accomplished pope. Naples was then in the hands of the Spaniards, and Naharro's comedies were doubtless represented in that city, whither Naharro himself removed, driven from Rome by the difficulties in which his satirical works involved him.[31] Cervantes does not mention Naharro in his preface to his comedies, which contains the best account we have of the origin of the Spanish drama. But other writers, and among them the editor of Cervantes's comedies, mention him as the real inventor of the Spanish drama. His plays were written in verse; there is propriety in his characters and some elegance in his style. He brought in the intrigue of an involved story to support the interest of his plays. They did not, however, obtain possession of the stage in Spain.