Encina

Encina, or ENZINA, JUAN DE LA, the founder of the secular drama in Spain, was born about 1469, not far from Salamanca, at the university of which town he was educated. He held successively the offices of secretary to the first Duke of Alva, musical director in Pope Leo X.'s chapel at Rome, and prior of Leon in Spain. He died at Salamanca in 1534. Besides his Cancionero, a collection of poems which went through six editions between 1496 and 1516, he wrote in 1521 a poor poetical account of a pilgrimage which he made to Jerusalem two years previously. But his fame rests on the fact that he wrote fourteen dramatic poems (Representaciones), half of them of a religious cast, but the other half altogether secular, these last the first of the kind acted in Spain, in 1492. These pieces possess no great merit, being almost destitute of plot, and showing little dramatic structure or spirit. See the edition by Cañete and Baobieri (Madrid, 1891).