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But to those who wish to study in these stories the growth of contemporary Spanish fiction, it is suggested that the authors be taken up in the order in which they are given in the Introduction. To the stories by Spanish authors have been added two by Spanish-American writers, the one a native of Costa Rica, the other of Chile. These stories are excellent and well worth reading.
Encouraged by the king's love of art and letters, the great painters like Velázquez and Ribera vied with each other in creating masterpieces for princely patrons, and great authors like Lope, Quevedo, and Calderón sharpened their wits to please a literary public.
Thus we find that in 1585 Spain had a divided drama, represented on the one side by the drama of reason and proportion fashioned after Greek and Roman models, and on the other a loosely joined, irregular, romantic drama of adventure and intrigue, such as was demanded by the Spanish temperament.
The text has been taken completely, without any omissions or modifications, from the Hartzenbusch collection of Comedias Escogidas de Lope de Vega published in the Biblioteca de Autores Españoles and, where it varies from other texts with which it has been compared, the variation is noted.
In them the author presents the graver themes of religion to the people in a popular and comprehensible manner, in which levity is often more prominent than gravity. Comedias de costumbres, in which the chief personages are from the lower classes and of which the language is even lascivious and the subject treated with a liberty not encountered in other dramas of the author.
Valera's Pepita Jiménez is perhaps the master-piece of Spanish prose fiction of the nineteenth century, and it shows some attempt at realism. His short stories are fantastic and allegorical, or are translations from other languages. He served his apprenticeship as a writer on the staff of several radical journals.
Ticknor says that no meter of which the language was susceptible escaped him. And in his dramatic composition we find as much variety in this respect as in any other. In el Arte nuevo de hacer Comedias, he says: "The versification should be carefully accommodated to the subject treated.
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