plainly a parody of the well-known and beautiful old Spanish ballad beginning—
Por el mes era de Mayo,
Quando hace la calor,
Quando canta la calandria, etc.,
a ballad which, so far as I know, can be traced no farther back than the ballad-book of 1555, or, at any rate, that of 1550, while here we have a distinct allusion to it before 1536, giving a curious proof how widely this old popular poetry was carried about by the memories of the people before it was written down and printed, and how much it was used for dramatic purposes from the earliest period of theatrical compositions.
[461] This “Auto da Fé,” as it is strangely called, is in Spanish (Obras, Tom. I. pp. 64, etc.); but there is one in Portuguese, represented before John III., (1527,) which is still more strangely called “Breve Summario da Historia de Deos,” the action beginning with Adam and Eve, and ending with the Saviour. Ibid., I. pp. 306, etc.
[462] Joam de Barros, the historian, in his dialogue on the Portuguese Language, (Varias Obras, Lisboa, 1785, 12mo, p. 222,) praises Vicente for the purity of his thoughts and style, and contrasts him proudly with the Celestina; “a book,” he adds, “to which the Portuguese language has no parallel.”
[463] His touching verses, “Ven, muerte, tan escondida,” so often cited, and at least once in Don Quixote, (Parte II. c. 38,) are found as far back as the Cancionero of 1511; but I am not aware that Escriva’s “Quexa de su Amiga” can be found earlier than in the Cancionero, Sevilla, 1535, where it occurs, f. 175. b, etc. He himself, no doubt, flourished about the year 1500-1510. But I should not, probably, have alluded to him here, if he had not been noticed in connection with the early Spanish theatre, by Martinez de la Rosa (Obras, Paris, 1827, 12mo, Tom. II. p. 336). Other poems, written in dialogue, by Alfonso de Cartagena, and by Puerto Carrero, occur in the Cancioneros Generales, but they can hardly be regarded as dramatic; and Clemencin twice notices Pedro de Lerma as one of the early contributors to the Spanish drama; but he is not mentioned by Moratin, Antonio, Pellicer, or any of the other authors who would naturally be consulted in relation to such a point. Don Quixote, ed. Clemencin, Tom. IV. p. viii., and Memorias de la Academia de Historia, Tom. VI. p. 406.
[464] Three editions of it are cited by L. F. Moratin, (Catálogo, No. 20,) the earliest of which is in 1515. My copy, however, is of neither of them. It is dated Çaragoça, 1544, (folio,) and is at the end of the “Problemas” and of the other works of Villalobos, which also precede it in the editions of 1543 and 1574.
[465] It fills about twenty-six pages and six hundred lines, chiefly in octave stanzas, in the edition of Antwerp, 1576, and contains a detailed account of the circumstances attending its representation.