that finally adopted by the Spaniards. It was in five acts, with the _introito_ or prologue. [SN: _Lope de Rueda._] A truly popular national drama was hardly likely to arise among courtiers and churchmen. It needed a chief who looked to the common audience as his patron, and who also had it in him to begin the work on lines which literature could afterwards develop, Spain found such a leader in Lope de Rueda (_floruit_ 1544?-1567?). Little is known of his life, but that little is more than is known with certainty of some contemporary men of letters. He was a native of Seville, and originally a goldbeater by trade. It may be that he acquired his taste for the stage by taking part in the performance of religious plays, which were always acted by townsmen or churchmen. The separation of the actor from the amateur, if that is the right word to apply to the burghers and peasants of the Middle Ages who appeared on the stage partly for amusement and partly from piety, on the one hand, and from the mere juggler, minstrel, or acrobat on the other, was going on in France and England. The same process was at work in Spain. By steps of which we can now learn nothing, Lope de Rueda became in the fullest sense a playwright and actor-manager. He strolled all over Spain. Cervantes, who had seen him, has immortalised his simple theatre--the few boards which formed the stage, the blanket which did duty as scenery, and behind which sat the guitar-player who represented the orchestra, the bags containing the sheepskin jackets and false beards forming the wardrobe of the company. The purely literary importance of Lope de Rueda’s work is not great. That part of it which survived is inconsiderable in bulk, and shows no advance on Naharro. He was not an ignorant man. The Italian plays were certainly known to him, and he wrote pure Castilian. But his chief contribution to the form of Spanish dramatic literature was the _paso_ or passage, a brief interlude, generally between “fools” or “clowns” in the Shakespearian sense, frequently introduced between the acts of a regular comedy. The monologue of Lance over his dog, or the scene between Speed and Lance with the love-letter, in the third act of the _Two Gentlemen of Verona_, would serve as _pasos_. But Lope de Rueda’s chief claim to honour is that he fairly conquered for the Spanish stage its place in the sun. He hung on no patron, but set his boards up in the market-place, looking to his audience for his reward. When he died, in or about 1567, the theatre was a recognised part of Spanish life. If he had not much enriched dramatic literature, he had provided those who could with a place in which they were free to grow to the extent of their intrinsic power. It is pleasant to know that he had his reward. He seems to have been a prosperous man, and Cervantes speaks with respect of his character. The fact that he was buried in the Cathedral of Córdova is a proof that he was not considered a mere “rogue and