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Spanish theater of the Renaissance begins with startling suddenness, given the inexplicable absence of dramatic texts before the sixteenth century. Castilian literature, unlike Catalan literature, where mystery plays are well documented, offers only a few examples of dramatic works in the Middle Ages. The earliest extant work, Auto de los Reyes Magos (the play of the Magi), is a twelfth-century fragment dealing with the search for Jesus by the Three Wise Men. More than three hundred years elapse before one finds another mystery play, Gómez Manrique’s Representación del nacimiento de Nuestro Señor (wr. 1467-1481; Nativity play). Curiously, the earlier play is considered much more dramatically advanced than the latter work.