It is usually a safe principle to abide by the judgment of time and leave a forgotten writer in the oblivion to which his nation consigns him. With the Spanish playwrights of the seventeenth century, however, the rule may be said to offer an exception by reason of the fact that the merciless excess of dramas forced into neglect, with what was mediocre, much that in itself was excellent and which might, under more favorable circumstances, have stood the test of time. The works of no one have suffered more in this respect than those of Ximénez de Enciso. Though he has from time to time been deemed worthy of honorable mention, it is not possible to say that he has ever been given the just measure of praise to which a closer view of what remains from his pen would entitle him. In his own day he enjoyed considerable fame, as the frequent mention of his achievement by contemporaries would go to show, but for the two and a half centuries which have passed since then, he has shared the fate of the majority of Spanish playwrights whose works have been consigned to an undeserved oblivion.