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Of the early literary efforts of Lope de Vega, such as have come down to us are evidently but a small part, but from them we know something of the breadth of his genius. In childhood even he wrote voluminously, and one of his plays, El Verdadero Amante, which we have of this early period, was written at the age of twelve, but was probably rewritten later in the author's life.

His genius is uneven, but when at his best Palacio Valdés is one of the most charming of modern novelists. His better known works are probably La hermana San Sulpicio and La alegría del capitán Ribot.

His best stories are probably El sombrero de tres picos, El capitán Veneno, and some of his Novelas cortas. Of the lesser writers of stories of manners and customs, Antonio de Trueba and Narciso Campillo should receive especial mention. A journalist, poet, and writer of short stories, Trueba is best known as an interpreter of Basque life.

Fernán Caballero was probably influenced by the Escenas andaluzas, the Escenas matritenses and Larra's essays on manners; and it is quite possible that from her German friends came to her some of the modern spirit of scientific investigation that led her to declare the novel to be "not the product of invention, but of observation."

The introduction of the tragic element into the play early in the first act has a tendency to soften its effect, especially as it has little relation to the subsequent action. However, the mere introduction of it in the play would probably, in the early French theater, class the drama as a tragi-comedy.

Although it is doubtless quite true that there has been in modern Spain no writer of short stories who rivals Guy de Maupassant, nor has there been any writer of longer stories who may compare favorably with Honoré de Balzac, yet, as a whole, the Spain of the nineteenth century has probably been pictured as faithfully as France by native authors.

But about 1560 there flourished in Spain probably the most important figure in the early history of the national drama. This was the Sevillian gold-beater, later actor and dramatic author, Lope de Rueda.

As has been already observed, the dramas of Juan del Encina and his immediate successors were probably presented to limited audiences. It is not improbable that parts were often taken by amateurs rather than by members of regular troupes.

This work, which has probably been the most widely read of all Spanish novels since Don Quijote, marked the transition from romanticism to present-day realism in Spanish literature, as Flaubert's Madame Bovary did in French letters ten years later.