the causes of its eruption.  The literary interests of the Indians found their chief expression however in the adaptation of Spanish plays for presentation on religious holidays.  Zuniga gives an entertaining description of these plays.  They were usually made up from three or four Spanish tragedies, the materials of which were so ingeniously interwoven that the mosaic seemed a single piece.  The characters were always Moors and Christians, and the action centered in the desire of Moors to marry Christian princesses or of Christians to marry Moorish princesses.  The Christian appears at a Moorish tournament or vice versa.  The hero and heroine fall in love but their parents oppose obstacles to the match.  To overcome the difficulties in case of a Moor and Christian princess was comparatively easy.  A war opportunely breaks out in which, after prodigies of valor, the Moor is converted and baptized, and the wedding follows.  The case is not so easy when a Christian prince loves a Moorish lady.  Since he can never forsake his religion his tribulations are many.  He is imprisoned, and his princess aids in his attempt to escape, which sometimes costs him his life; or if the scene is laid in war time either the princess is converted and escapes to the Christian army, or the prince dies a tragic death.  The hero is usually provided with a Christ, or other image or relic, given him by his dying mother, which extricates him from his many plights.  He meets lions and bears, and highwaymen attack him; but from all he escapes by a miracle.  If, however, some principal personage is not taken off by a tragic end, the Indians find the play insipid.  During the intermission one or two clowns come out and raise a laugh by jests that are frigid enough “to freeze hot water in the tropics.”  After the play is over a clown appears again and criticizes the play and makes satirical comments on the village officials.  These plays usually lasted three days. [137] Le Gentil attended one of them and says that he does not believe any one in the world was ever so bored as he was. [138] Yet the Indians were passionately fond of these performances. [139]

If one may judge from Retana’s catalogue of his Philippine collection arranged in chronological order, the sketch we have given of the literature accessible to Filipinos who could not read Spanish in the eighteenth century would serve not unfairly for much of the nineteenth.  The first example of secular prose fiction I have noted in his lists is Friar Bustamente’s pastoral novel depicting the quiet charms of country life as compared with the anxieties and tribulations of life in Manila. [140] His collection did not contain so far as I noticed a single secular historical narrative in Tagal or anything in natural science.

Sufficient familiarity with Spanish to compensate for this lack of books of secular knowledge was enjoyed by very few Indians in the country districts and these had learned it mainly while servants of the curate.  It was the common opinion of the Spanish authorities that the Friars purposely neglected instructing the Indians in Spanish, in order to perpetuate their hold upon them; but Zuniga repels this charge as unjust and untrue. [141]