But the popular vein had not yet been struck. Except dramatic exhibitions of a religious character, and under ecclesiastical authority, nothing had been attempted in which the people, as such, had any share. The attempt, however, was now made, and made successfully. Its author was a mechanic of Seville, Lope de Rueda, a goldbeater by trade, who, from motives now entirely unknown, became both a dramatic writer and a public actor. The period in which he flourished has been supposed to be between 1544 and 1567, in which year he is spoken of as dead; and the scene of his adventures is believed to have extended to Seville, Córdova, Valencia, Segovia, and probably other places, where his plays and farces could be represented with profit. At Segovia, we know he acted in the new cathedral, during the week of its consecration, in 1558; and Cervantes and the unhappy Antonio Perez both speak with admiration of his powers as an actor; the first having been twenty years old in 1567, the period commonly assumed as that of Rueda’s death,[16] and the last having been eighteen. Rueda’s success, therefore, even during his lifetime, seems to have been remarkable; and when he died, though he belonged to the despised and rejected profession of the stage, he was interred with honor among the mazy pillars in the nave of the great cathedral at Córdova.[17] [16] It is known that he was certainly dead as early as that year, because the edition of his “Comedias” then published at Valencia, by his friend Timoneda, contains, at the end of the “Engaños,” a sonnet on his death by Francisco Ledesma. The last, and, indeed, almost the only, date we have about him, is that of his acting in the cathedral at Segovia in 1558; of which we have a distinct account in the learned and elaborate History of Segovia, by Diego de Colmenares, (Segovia, 1627, fol., p. 516), where he says, that, on a stage erected between the choirs, “Lope de Rueda, a well-known actor [famoso comediante] of that age represented an entertaining play [gustosa comedia].” [17] The well-known passage about Lope de Rueda, in Cervantes’s Prólogo to his own plays, is of more consequence than all the rest that remains concerning him. Every thing, however, is collected in Navarrete, “Vida de Cervantes,” pp. 255-260; and in Casiano Pellicer, “Orígen de la Comedia y del Histrionismo en España,” Madrid, 1804, 12mo, Tom. II. pp. 72-84. His works were collected after his death by his friend Juan de Timoneda, and published in different editions, between 1567 and 1588.[18] They consist of four Comedias, two Pastoral Colloquies, and ten Pasos, or dialogues, all in prose; besides two dialogues in verse. They were all evidently written for representation, and were unquestionably acted before popular audiences, by the strolling company Lope de Rueda led about.