[417] The Coplas of Mingo Revulgo were very early attributed to John de Mena, the most famous poet of the time (N. Antonio, Bib. Nov., Tom. I. p. 387); but, unhappily for this conjecture, Mena was of the opposite party in politics. Mariana, who found Revulgo of consequence enough to be mentioned when discussing the troubles of Henry IV., declares (Historia, Lib. XXIII. c. 17, Tom. II. p. 475) the Coplas to have been written by Hernando del Pulgar, the chronicler; but no reason is given for this opinion except the fact that Pulgar wrote a commentary on them, making their allegory more intelligible than it would have been likely to be made by any body not quite familiar with the thoughts and purposes of the author. See the dedication of this commentary to Count Haro, with the Prólogo, and Sarmiento, Poesía Española, Madrid, 1775, 4to, § 872. But whoever wrote Mingo Revulgo, there is no doubt it was an important and a popular poem in its day. [418] The “Diálogo entre el Amor y un Viejo” was first printed, I believe, in the “Cancionero General” of 1511, but it is found with the Coplas de Manrique, 1588 and 1632. See, also, N. Antonio, Bib. Nov., Tom. II. pp. 263, 264, for notices of Cota. The fact of this old Dialogue having an effect on the coming drama may be inferred, not only from the obvious resemblance between the two, but from a passage in Juan de la Enzina’s Eclogue beginning “Vamonos, Gil, al aldea,” which plainly alludes to the opening of Cota’s Dialogue, and, indeed, to the whole of it. The passage in Enzina is the concluding _Villancico_, which begins,-- Ninguno cierre las puertas; Si Amor viniese a llamar, Que no le ha aprovechar. Let no man shut his doors; If Love should come to call, ’T will do no good at all. The next contribution to the foundations of the Spanish theatre is the “Celestina,” a dramatic story, contemporary with the poems just noticed, and probably, in part, the work of the same hands. It is a prose composition, in twenty-one acts, or parts, originally called, “The Tragicomedy of Calisto and Melibœa”; and though, from its length, and, indeed, from its very structure, it can never have been represented, its dramatic spirit and movement have left traces, that are not to to be mistaken,[419] of their influence on the national drama ever since. [419] They are called _actos_ in the original; but neither _act_ nor _scene_ is a proper name for the parts of which the Celestina is composed; since it occasionally mingles up, in the most confused manner, and in the _same_ act, conversations that necessarily happened at the _same_ moment in _different_ places. Thus, in the fourteenth act, we have conversations held partly between Calisto and Melibœa inside her father’s garden, and partly between Calisto’s servants, who are outside of it; all given as a consecutive dialogue, without any notice of the change of place.