ABSTRACT
Traditionally when scholars have described Hispanic theater in the United States, they conceive a modem phenomenon, generally set in the post-World War II years or perhaps even in the 1960s. However, in recent years, Hispanic U.S. theater has been traced back to its origins, the evangelical missionary theater of the Southwest. On April 30, 1598, near El Paso, Marcos Farfán de los Godos produced a play which described the expected Christianization of the territory. This noteworthy act which preceded by sixty-seven years the first recorded play in English and by eight years the French masque produced in Acadia does not necessarily indicate continuity but primacy. Nevertheless, it awakens traditional American literary historians to a bilingual presence which is being disenterred.
