The same national spirit which prevented the patriotic Camoens from rejecting the old lyric forms of the Portuguese poetry, induced him to write several dramas, and thus to leave no kind of poetic composition unattempted. It is not known at what period of his life these dramatic works were produced; but it is probable that they were written previously to his departure for India. They belong more completely to the age of Camoens than to the poet himself. They are, however, highly deserving of attention, though they should be merely considered as the last proofs of the poetic versatility and plastic genius of an author who comprised his whole age within himself, as far as a Portuguese national poet could accommodate himself to his age. Camoens was too much a poet to wish to supplant the national drama of his native country, however rude it then might be, by a prosaically modelled imitation of the ancient drama. He adhered to the party formed by the Spanish dramatist Naharro, and his ingenious countryman Gil Vicente. But his determination to dramatic poetry was not sufficiently decided to enable him to fix, by his productions, the taste of the Portuguese nation. Had the genius which animates the Lusiad, taken a dramatic direction, Camoens would have been the Calderon of Portugal, before a Lope de Vega had arisen in Spain. But Camoens in the composition of his dramas contented himself with slightly overstepping the bounds of Gil Vicente’s manner, and with refining, also, only in a slight degree, the construction of the plot and the language. The rudest of the three dramas, which are now attached as a supplement to the other works of the author, is, _El Rey Seleuco_, (King Seleucus) a singular production, founded on the well known anecdote of the history of that monarch, who resigned his wife Stratonice to his son Antiochus, lest the youth should fall a sacrifice to the passion of love. Camoens seems to have had no idea of treating this delicate subject in a sentimental way. The burlesque prelude or prologue, as it is called, in prose, is calculated to raise the expectation of a farce rather then of a serious drama. The theatrical manager, a lad who acts as his servant, a man of condition, who presents himself as a spectator, and his _escudeiro_, (attendant) are the characters in this prologue. The manager’s servant is the _gracioso_ of the piece, and his jokes are at least so far useful that they afford an idea of the kind of wit which was at that time relished by the fashionable world in Lisbon. The drama itself, to which this prologue is the introduction, is entitled a comedy in the Spanish acceptation of the term, and is likewise denominated an _auto_, probably because royal personages are brought upon the scene, a circumstance which according to the Portuguese notions of poetry in that age elevated the piece above a mere comedy. The historical material is moulded according to the romantic forms; the composition