[Footnote 17: Between the days of Lope de Rueda and those of Cervantes' debut, Naharra of Toledo had made considerable improvement in the mechanics of the art. The sack was rejected, and chests and trunks held the properties. The musicians came from behind their blanket, and faced their customers. He rejected the beards except in the case of disguisements, and invented or adopted thunder, lightning, clouds, challenges, and fights. He himself was a capital personator of cowardly bullies.] "In all the playhouses of Madrid were acted some plays of my composing, such as the Humors of Algiers, the Destruction of Numantia, and the Naval Battle, wherein I took the liberty of reducing plays to three acts which before consisted of five. I showed, or, to speak better, I was the first that represented the imaginations and secret thoughts of the soul, exhibiting moral characters to public view to the entire satisfaction of the audience. I composed at that time thirty plays at least, all of which were acted without anybody's interrupting the players by flinging cucumbers or any other trash at them. They ran their race without any hissing, cat-calling, or any other disorder. But happening to be taken up with other things, I laid aside play-writing, and then came on that prodigy of nature, that marvellous man, the great Lope de Vega, who raised himself to be supreme monarch of the stage. He subdued all the players, and made them obedient to his will. He filled the world with theatrical pieces, finely and happily devised, and full of good sense, and so numerous that they take up above ten thousand sheets of paper all of his own writing, and, which is a most wonderful thing to relate, he saw them all acted or at least had the satisfaction to hear they were all acted." Good-hearted, generous Cervantes, who could so dwell on that success in a rival which condemned himself to the wretched life of an inland revenue officer, to the hatred of non-payers of tax, to prosecutions, and to the discomforts of an Andaluçian or Manchegan dungeon, and separation from his niece, sister, daughter, and wife, whom, in absence of data to the contrary, we take to be amiable and affectionate women.