While Vicente, in Portugal, was thus giving an impulse to Spanish dramatic literature, which, considering the intimate connection of the two countries and their courts, can hardly have been unfelt in Spain at the time, and was certainly recognized there afterwards, scarcely any thing was done in Spain itself. During the five-and-twenty years that followed the first appearance of Juan de la Enzina, no other dramatic poet seems to have been encouraged or demanded. He was sufficient to satisfy the rare wants of his royal and princely patrons; and, as we have seen, in both countries, the drama continued to be a courtly amusement, confined to a few persons of the highest rank. The commander Escriva, who lived at this time and is the author of a few beautiful verses found in the oldest Cancioneros,[463] wrote, indeed, a dialogue, partly in prose and partly in verse, in which he introduces several interlocutors and brings a complaint to the god of Love against his lady. But the whole is an allegory, occasionally graceful and winning from its style, but obviously not susceptible of representation; so that there is no reason to suppose it had any influence on a class of compositions already somewhat advanced. A similar remark may be added about a translation of the “Amphitryon” of Plautus, made into terse Spanish prose by Francisco de Villalobos, physician to Ferdinand the Catholic and Charles the Fifth, which was first printed in 1515, but which it is not at all probable was ever acted.[464] These, however, are the only attempts made in Spain or Portugal before 1517, except those of Enzina and Vicente, which need to be referred to at all. [463] His touching verses, “Ven, muerte, tan escondida,” so often cited, and at least once in Don Quixote, (Parte II. c. 38,) are found as far back as the Cancionero of 1511; but I am not aware that Escriva’s “Quexa de su Amiga” can be found earlier than in the Cancionero, Sevilla, 1535, where it occurs, f. 175. b, etc. He himself, no doubt, flourished about the year 1500-1510. But I should not, probably, have alluded to him here, if he had not been noticed in connection with the early Spanish theatre, by Martinez de la Rosa (Obras, Paris, 1827, 12mo, Tom. II. p. 336). Other poems, written in dialogue, by Alfonso de Cartagena, and by Puerto Carrero, occur in the Cancioneros Generales, but they can hardly be regarded as dramatic; and Clemencin twice notices Pedro de Lerma as one of the early contributors to the Spanish drama; but he is not mentioned by Moratin, Antonio, Pellicer, or any of the other authors who would naturally be consulted in relation to such a point. Don Quixote, ed. Clemencin, Tom. IV. p. viii., and Memorias de la Academia de Historia, Tom. VI. p. 406.