The old religious drama, meantime, was still upheld by ecclesiastical power. Of this we have sufficient proof in the titles of the Mysteries that were from time to time performed, and in the well-known fact, that, when, with all the magnificence of the court of Charles the Fifth, the infant heir to the crown, afterwards Philip the Second, was baptized at Valladolid, in 1527, five religious plays, one of which was on the Baptism of Saint John, constituted a part of the gorgeous ceremony.[4] Such compositions, however, did not advance the drama; though perhaps some of them, like that of Pedro de Altamira, on the Supper at Emmaus, are not without poetical merit.[5] On the contrary, their tendency must have been to keep back theatrical representations within their old religious purposes and limits.[6] [4] The account of this ceremony, and the facts concerning the dramas in question, are given by Sandoval, “Historia de Carlos V.,” (Anvers, 1681, fol. Tom. I. p. 619, Lib. XVI., § 13), and are of some consequence in the history of the Spanish drama. [5] It was printed in 1523, and a sufficient extract from it is to be found in Moratin, Catálogo, No. 36. [6] A specimen of the Mysteries of the age of Charles V. may be found in an extremely rare volume, entitled, in its three parts, “Triaca del Alma,” “Triaca de Amor,” and “Triaca de Tristes”;--or Medley for the Soul, for Love, and for Sadness. Its author was Marcelo de Lebrixa, son of the famous scholar Antonio; and the dedication and conclusion of the first part imply that it was composed when the author was forty years old,--after the death of his father, which happened in 1522, and during the reign of the Emperor, which ended in 1556. The first part, to which I particularly allude, consists of a Mystery on the Incarnation, in above eight thousand short verses. It has no other action than such as consists in the appearance of the angel Gabriel to the Madonna, bringing Reason with him in the shape of a woman, and followed by another angel, who leads in the Seven Virtues;--the whole piece being made up out of their successive discourses and exhortations, and ending with a sort of summary, by Reason and by the author, in favor of a pious life. Certainly, so slight a structure, with little merit in its verses, could do nothing to advance the drama of the sixteenth century. It was, however, intended for representation. “It was written,” says its author, “for the praise and solemnization of the Festival of Our Lady’s Incarnation; so that it may be acted as a play [la puedan por farça representar] by devout nuns in their convents, since no men appear in it, but only angels and young damsels.”