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Other things besides the drama were in their infancy when Cervantes was a

boy The period of his boyhood was in every way a transition period for

Spain The old chivalrous Spain had passed away The new Spain was the

htiest power the world had seen since the Roman Empire and it had not

yet been called upon to pay the price of its greatness By the policy of

Ferdinand and Xin had been made absolute, and the

Church and Inquisition adroitly adjusted to keep him so The nobles, who

had always resisted absolutisht the

Moors, had been divested of all political power, a like fate had befallen

the cities, the free constitutions of Castile and Aragon had been swept

away, and the only function that re's dictation

The transition extended to literature Men who, like Garcilaso de la Vega

and Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, followed the Italian wars, had brought back

from Italy the products of the post-Renaissance literature, which took

root and flourished and even threatened to extinguish the native growths

Damon and Thyrsis, Phyllis and Chloe had been fairly naturalised in

Spain, together with all the devices of pastoral poetry for investing

with an air of novelty the idea of a dispairing shepherd and inflexible

shepherdess As a set-off against this, the old historical and

traditional ballads, and the true pastorals, the songs and ballads of

peasant life, were being collected assiduously and printed in the

cancioneros that succeeded one another with increasing rapidity But the

was the