The first is, that the attempts to form and develop a national drama in Spain have been few and rare. During the two centuries following the first notice of it, about 1250, we cannot learn distinctly that any thing was undertaken but rude exhibitions in pantomime; though it is not unlikely dialogues may sometimes have been added, such as we find in the more imperfect religious pageants produced at the same period in England and France. During the next century, which brings us down to the time of Lope de Rueda, we have nothing better than “Mingo Revulgo,” which is rather a spirited political satire than a drama, Enzina’s and Vicente’s dramatic eclogues, and Naharro’s more dramatic “Propaladia,” with a few translations from the ancients which were little noticed or known. And during the half-century which Lope de Rueda opened with an attempt to create a popular drama, we have obtained only a few farces from himself and his followers, the little that was done at Seville and Valencia, and the countervailing tragedies of Bermudez and Argensola, who intended, no doubt, to follow what they considered the safer and more respectable traces of the ancient Greek masters. Three centuries and a half, therefore, or four centuries, furnished less dramatic literature to Spain, than the last half-century of the same portion of time had furnished to France and Italy; and near the end of the whole period, or about 1585, it is apparent that the national genius was not more turned towards the drama than it was at the same period in England, where Greene and Peele were just preparing the way for Marlowe and Shakspeare. In the next place, the apparatus of the stage, including scenery and dresses, was very imperfect. During the greater part of the period we have gone over, dramatic exhibitions in Spain were either religious pantomimes shown off in the churches to the people, or private entertainments given at court and in the houses of the nobility. Lope de Rueda brought them out into the public squares, and adapted them to the comprehension, the taste, and the humors of the multitude. But he had no theatre anywhere, and his genial farces were represented on temporary scaffolds, by his own company of strolling players, who stayed but a few days at a time in even the largest cities, and were sought, when there, chiefly by the lower classes of the people.