Since the age of Lope de Vega, the word comedy (_comedia_) has had in the dramatic language of Spain a totally different signification from that which was attached to it by the ancient Greeks and Romans, and which it retains in most countries of modern Europe. It is the generic name of several species of drama, some of which, according to our established notions, are neither comedies nor tragedies; but all of which approximate to one common spirit of invention and execution. The critic will inevitably form an erroneous judgment of these works, if he be guided by notions deduced from the Greek and Roman drama, and which, with certain limitations, are applicable to all dramatic compositions except the Spanish comedy. The spirit of the Spanish comedy must not be sought for in that popular satire, which constitutes the very essence of the ancient and modern comedy, properly so called. The compositions in which it is to be found are of a totally different nature. In them stories of country and city life are clothed in romantic poetic colours, and blended with the interesting inventions of a bold and irregular fancy, without any distinction between the gay and the serious, or the comic and the tragic. In a word, a Spanish comedy is in its principle a dramatic novel; and as there are tragic, comic, historical, and purely imaginative novels, so, in like manner, the Spanish comedy readily adopts those various modes of exciting interest on the stage. In Spanish comedies as in novels, princes and potentates are no more out of place than jockeys and fops; and these dissimilar characters may all be introduced on the stage at once, should the progress of the intrigue require so heterogeneous an approximation. Satire is therefore merely an agreeable accessary in the Spanish comedy, of which the poet may avail himself at his pleasure. In these comedies the powerful delineation of character is no more essential than in novels. Even a motley combination of burlesque and serious, vulgar and pathetic scenes, is not hostile to the spirit of a Spanish comedy, the object of which is not to maintain the interest in a particular direction. The subject of the piece may be a moving or a horrific story; still the picture presented is entertaining, but entertaining in a manner totally different from that kind of comedy which exhibits the follies of life in a satirical point of view. A continuance of the pathetic or the horrific would be as little congenial to the spirit of those dramatic novels which the Spaniards call comedies, as a continuance of the ludicrous. In this is manifested the first of the peculiar conditions required by the Spanish public, of which notice has already been taken in treating of the origin of the Spanish comedy. With any other people than the Spaniards these dramatic novels would have assumed a somewhat different character, without, however, departing from their original spirit. But