To the beginning of the seventeenth century also belongs the _Pratica de Tres Pastores_ (1626), a Christmas play by FREI ANTONIO DA ESTRELLA, who may perhaps be identified with Frei Antonio de Lisboa, author of the lost _Auto dos Dous Ladrões_ (1603). The three shepherds, Rodrigo, Loirenço, and Sylvestre, are awakened by an angel singing _cousas de preço_. They agree that the song echoing over the hills is no earth-born music but _algum Charubim ou Anjo ou Charafim_, and presently they go to Bethlehem to offer their rustic gifts. The author has caught the charm and spontaneity of the earlier Christmas _autos_. Another seventeenth-century _auto_ of the same kind is the _Colloquio do Nascimento do Menino Jesus_ by the Lisbon bookseller, FRANCISCO LOPEZ. The scene and conversation of the three shepherds, Gil, Silvestre, and Paschoal, with their _assorda ou migas de alho_ in the cold night--_mas como queima o rocio_, says Gil--are very naturally drawn. An echo of the satirical side of Gil Vicente’s genius is to be found in the _Auto das Padeiras chamado da Fome_ (1638),[366] in which the various frauds of the bakeresses, sardine-sellers, market-women, pastry-cooks, and tavern-keepers of Lisbon are shown up by the devils Palurdam and Calcamar, as in the _Barca do Purgatorio_. There is nothing of Vicente in the _Auto novo da Barca da Morte_ (1732) by a Lisbon author who wrote under the name of Diogo da Costa (Innocencio da Silva, ii. 153, believed that his real name was André da Luz). It consists of a single scene crowded with classical allusions. Death has deprived Midas of his gold, Alexander of his victories, Aristotle of his learning. The actors here are a rich miser, a poor man, a youth, an old man, and Death, whose boat Time steers. The title of the _Auto novo e curioso da Forneira de Aljubarrota_ (1815), also attributed to Diogo da Costa, is misleading, since it is a prose narrative of the experiences of that _valorosa matrona_, who, dressed as an _almocreve_, comes to Lisbon with her two _bestinhas_ laden with wine. Of the twenty-five plays contained in the _Musa entretenida de varios entremeses_ (1658) edited by Manuel Coelho Rebello, No. 17 (_Castigos de vn Castelhano_) is in Spanish and Portuguese, six are in Portuguese,[367] all the rest in Spanish. Popular plays continued to be written long after the introduction of the classical drama and in spite of the antagonism of the priests. They were often composed in a variety of metres, as the _Acto de Sᵗᵃ Genoveva, Princesa de Barbante_ (1735) by Balthasar Luis da Fonseca, if its verse can be called metre,[368] or the _Comedia famosa intitulada A Melhor Dita de Amor_ (1745) by Rodrigo Antonio de Almeida,[369] which opens with a sonnet and proceeds in _redondilhas_, hendecasyllables, and prose.