The eight Entremeses are better than the eight full-length plays. They are short farces, generally in prose, with a slight plot, and sometimes with none, and were intended merely to amuse an audience in the intervals between the acts of the longer pieces. “The Spectacle of Wonders,” for instance, is only a series of practical tricks to frighten the persons attending a puppet-show, so as to persuade them that they see what is really not on the stage. “The Watchful Guard” interests us, because he seems to have drawn the character of the soldier from his own; and the date of 1611, which is contained in it, may indicate the time when it was written. “The Jealous Old Man” is a reproduction of the tale of “The Jealous Estremadurian,” with a different and more spirited conclusion. And the “Cueva de Salamanca” is one of those jests at the expense of husbands which are common enough on the Spanish stage, and were, no doubt, equally common in Spanish life and manners. All, indeed, have an air of truth and reality, which, whether they were founded in fact or not, it was evidently the author’s purpose to give them. But there was an insuperable difficulty in the way of all his efforts on the stage. Cervantes had not dramatic talent, nor a clear perception how dramatic effects were to be produced. From the time when he wrote the “Trato de Argel,” which was an exhibition of the sufferings he had himself witnessed and shared in Algiers, he seemed to suppose that whatever was both absolutely true and absolutely striking could be produced with effect on the theatre; thus confounding the province of romantic fiction and story-telling with that of theatrical representation, and often relying on trivial incidents and an humble style for effects which could be produced only by ideal elevation and incidents so combined by a dramatic instinct as to produce a dramatic interest.