It is above all things necessary to begin by distinguishing the three or four parties, which on totally different principles endeavoured to cultivate dramatic poetry in Spain, and which appear to have been hitherto overlooked by the writers on Spanish literature, merely because each of those parties pursued its object, without openly declaring war against the others. Critical cultivation was not yet so far advanced in Spain as to open a field for literary warfare. But the heterogeneous nature of the Spanish dramas of the first half and ten following years of the sixteenth century, renders it evident, on a very slight examination, that the authors who composed them must have been influenced by different views.[277] The party called the erudite, was the first which at that period laboured to introduce into Spain a style of dramatic literature, worthy to be called national. This party consisted of men of information and taste, though possessing but little knowledge of the true art of dramatic poetry, and still less of imagination. These men, like a similar party in Italy, endeavoured to form the modern drama on the model of the antique. As, however, the most zealous among them did not possess sufficient talent to imitate the ancient models, they began to translate them, and performed their task in prose. A Spanish translation of the Amphitryon of Plautus, by Villalobos, physician to Charles V. was printed in 1515. Shortly afterwards there appeared a new translation of the same drama, by Perez de Oliva, a prose writer of considerable merit, who will be further noticed in the course of this history. Perez de Oliva even ventured to make a prose version of the Electra of Sophocles. This unfortunate attempt appeared under the title of _La Venganza de Agamemnon_.[278] He also translated the Hecuba of Euripides. At a somewhat later period the Portuguese comedies of Vasconcellos, written in the manner of Plautus, were published in the Castilian language. Translations of several comedies of Plautus subsequently appeared, and at length Pedro Simon de Abril published a complete translation of Terence, which is still much esteemed by the Spaniards.[279] Thus it was not the fault of the erudite party that the Spanish drama did not resemble the ancient. But to introduce in Spain the tragic style of the classic drama, in all its poetic purity, or even the style of the ancient comedies in iambic verse, was an idea which could only have originated with scholars who did not understand the character of the Spanish public. The translators, therefore, even those who endeavoured to conciliate the public taste by prose versions, formed, with their learned friends, a solitary party. No first rate poet arose in Spain, like Ariosto in Italy, to amuse and instruct the public by original dramatic compositions on the classic model. It is possible that essays in the ancient manner may have been performed on