The earliest follower of Lope de Rueda was his friend and editor, Juan de Timoneda, a bookseller of Valencia, who certainly flourished during the middle and latter part of the sixteenth century, and probably died in extreme old age, soon after the year 1597.[33] His thirteen or fourteen pieces that were printed pass under various names, and have a considerable variety in their character; the most popular in their tone being the best. Four are called “Pasos,” and four “Farsas,”--all much alike. Two are called “Comedias,” one of which, the “Aurelia,” written in short verses, is divided into five _jornadas_, and has an _intróito_, after the manner of Naharro; while the other, the “Cornelia,” is merely divided into seven scenes, and written in prose, after the manner of Lope de Rueda. Besides these, we have what, in the present sense of the word, is for the first time called an “Entremes”; a Tragicomedia, which is a mixture of mythology and modern history; a religious Auto, on the subject of the Lost Sheep; and a translation, or rather an imitation, of the “Menæchmi” of Plautus. In all of them, however, he seems to have relied for success on a spirited, farcical dialogue, like that of Lope de Rueda; and all were, no doubt, written to be acted in the public squares, to which, more than once, they make allusion.[34] [33] Ximeno, Escritores de Valencia, Tom. I. p. 72, and Fuster, Biblioteca Valenciana, Tom. I. p. 161. [34] In the Prologue to the Cornelia, one of the speakers says that one of the principal personages of the piece lives in Valencia, “in this house which you see,” he adds, pointing the spectators picturesquely, and no doubt with comic effect, to some house they could all see. A similar jest about another of the personages is repeated a little farther on. The “Cornelia,” first printed in 1559, is somewhat confused in its story. We have in it a young lady, taken, when a child, by the Moors, and returned, when grown up, to the neighbourhood of her friends, without knowing who she is; a foolish fellow, deceived by his wife, and yet not without shrewdness enough to make much merriment; and Pasquin, partly a quack doctor, partly a magician, and wholly a rogue; who, with five or six other characters, make rather a superabundance of materials for so short a drama. Some of the dialogues are full of life; and the development of two or three of the characters is good, especially that of Cornalla, the clown; but the most prominent personage, perhaps,--the magician,--is taken, in a considerable degree, from the “Negromante” of Ariosto, which was represented at Ferrara about thirty years earlier, and proves that Timoneda had some scholarship, if not always a ready invention.[35] [35] “Con privilegio. Comedia llamada Cornelia, nuevamente compuesta, por Juan de Timoneda. Es muy sentida, graciosa, y vozijada. Año 1559.” 8vo.