Lope de Rueda followed him. The "great Lope de Rueda" Cervantes calls him, adding that he was an excellent actor and a clever man. "He was born," he continues, "at Seville, and was a goldbeater by trade. He was admirable in pastoral poetry, and no one either before or after excelled him in this species of composition. Although when I saw him I was a child, and could not judge of the excellence of his verses, several have remained in my memory, and, recalling them now at a ripe age, I find them worthy their reputation. In the time of this celebrated Spaniard, all the paraphernalia of a dramatic author and manager was contained in a bag: it consisted of four white dresses for shepherds, trimmed with copper gilt, four sets of false beards and wigs, and four crooks, more or less. The comedies were mere conversations, like eclogues, between two or three shepherds and a shepherdess, adorned and prolonged by two or three interludes of negresses, clowns or Biscayans. Lope performed the various parts with all the truth and excellence in the world. At that time there were no side scenes, no combats between Moors and Christians on horseback or on foot. There was no figure which arose, or appeared to rise, from the centre of the earth, through a trapdoor in the theatre. His stage was formed of a few planks laid across benches, and so raised about four palms above the ground. Neither angels nor souls descended from the sky: the only theatrical decoration was an old curtain, held up by ropes on each side: it formed the back of the stage, and separated the behind scenes from the front. Behind were placed the musicians, who sang some old romance to the music of a guitar." As an actor himself Rueda doubtless could judge best of the public taste. His own parts were those of fools, roguish servants, and Biscayan boors. His plays were collected by Timoneda, a bookseller of Valencia, but, like the witticisms of the masks of the old Italian stage, they lose much in print. His plots consist of chapters of mistakes: there are a multitude of characters in his dramas, and jests and witticisms abound. These generally consist of ridiculous quarrels, in which a clown plays the principal part.[32] Spanish critics call him the restorer, it would be better to say--the founder of the Spanish theatre. After Rueda, Cervantes tells us, came another Naharro, a native of Toledo; he was also an actor and manager. "He augmented the decorations of the comedies; he substituted trunks and boxes for the old bag. He drew the musicians out from behind the curtain, where they were previously placed. He deprived the actors of their beards; for before him no actor had ever appeared without a false beard. He desired that all should show an unmasked battery, except those who represented old men, or were disguised. He invented side scenes, clouds, thunder, lightning, challenges, and battles.