Lope de Vega Carpio

Spanish playwright

• Born: November 25, 1562
• Birthplace: Madrid, Spain
• Died: August 27, 1635
• Place of death: Madrid, Spain

Lope de Vega was the creator of the Spanish national theater of the Golden Age. He established the norms that would characterize Spanish theater until the late seventeenth century.

Early Life

Lope de Vega Carpio (LOH-pay day BAY-ghah KAHR-pyoh) was of humble origins. His father, an embroiderer, died when Lope de Vega was still a boy. At an early age, Lope de Vega was taken to Seville for a brief period, but he spent most of his life in Madrid, at that time a highly stimulating city and cultural center. Juan Pérez de Montalbán, Lope de Vega’s disciple and first biographer, relates that at five years of age, Lope de Vega could read in Spanish and in Latin. At seven, he was writing his first compositions, and at ten, his first plays. Lope de Vega continued his studies at the Colegio de la Compañía de Jesús. About 1576, he entered into the service of Jerónimo Manrique de Lara, Bishop of Ávila. He probably later attended the University of Alcalá. In 1580, he left for Salamanca, where he was a student at the university.

Lope de Vega was involved in many amorous relationships and participated in several military campaigns. In 1579, when he had just turned seventeen, he fell in love with María de Aragón, then fifteen. In 1583, he accompanied Alvaro de Bazán on a military campaign to Terceira Island. It was upon his return that he met Elena Osorio, then unhappily married to a comic actor, and became her lover. By this time, Lope de Vega’s reputation as a writer was starting to grow, and Elena’s father, who recognized the young man’s potential, did not oppose the relationship, but Lope de Vega, fiercely jealous of Elena’s husband, wrote some provocative verses that caused a scandal. Elena reacted violently to his behavior, and the playwright then responded by attacking Elena and her family, once more in verse. In 1587, Lope de Vega was detained by the authorities for libel, and the following year he was condemned to exile. He then ran away with Isabel de Urbina, whom he married before embarking on the ill-fated Spanish Armada.

After Isabel’s death in 1595, Lope de Vega was permitted to return to Madrid. During the following years, he developed into the leading Spanish playwright. It was during this period that he became embroiled in a heated literary polemic with the poet Luis de Góngora y Argote, whose ornate style Lope de Vega disliked intensely. In 1598, Lope de Vega married Juana de Guardo, while continuing his amorous relationship with Micaela de Luján, called Camila Lucinda in his verses. During the fifteen years he was married to Juana, he engaged in numerous affairs. In 1605, he entered into the service of the duke of Sessa, who became his patron. When Juana died in 1613, Lope de Vega took holy orders without diminishing either his involvement in love intrigues or his literary production. By this point in his life, he had become the model for all the playwrights of his generation.

Life’s Work

Lope de Vega’s active love life did not distract him from writing. He was one of the most prolific literary figures in Spanish history. He claimed to have written about fifteen hundred plays, although modern critics maintain that this figure is certainly an exaggeration. About 470 of his full-length plays survive. In addition, he wrote short, one-act religious plays known as autos sacramentales , as well as poetry and novels. Because of his almost superhuman talents and energy, he was called the “Phoenix of Geniuses” and the “Monster of Nature.”

Following the lead of Lope de Rueda, Lope de Vega began early in his career to write for the masses. He chose themes that would interest the common man, often dramatizing well-known and popular legends or historical events. Many of his plays were based on episodes from chronicles or on folk songs. By selecting subjects that were familiar and popular, Lope de Vega created a theater that would hold the interest of his audience, and one that was distinctly Spanish in nature.

In El arte nuevo de hacer comedias en este tiempo (The New Art of Writing Plays , 1914), published in 1609, Lope de Vega explained his dramatic theory. He recommended that playwrights choose subjects, such as love and honor, that would elicit strong reactions from the audience. He abandoned many of the conventions that characterized earlier Spanish theater. For example, classical tradition dictated that dramatists respect the unities of time, place, and action, according to which a plot must take place within the period of a day, must occur in one specific location, and must not include subplots. Lope de Vega found these rules artificial and restrictive. He preferred a more natural approach that would allow events to take place wherever and whenever appropriate. In one of his most popular plays, Fuenteovejuna (wr. 1611-1618, pb. 1619; The Sheep-Well , 1936), written between 1611 and 1618, the first act begins in the palace of the Calatrava order, in Almagro; moves to the plaza of the town of Fuenteovejuna; skips to the palace of the Catholic monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella; and ends in the countryside surrounding Fuenteovejuna.

Lope de Vega wrote tragedy and comedy and also developed the tragicomedia , a play that mixes elements of both. His purpose was to imitate nature, in which tragedy and comedy exist side by side. He defined the structure of the Spanish drama, fixing the number of acts at three. He wrote all of his plays in verse and fixed the function of each metric form. For example, the romance, a traditional ballad form, was to be used for narrations, while the décima, a ten-line stanza, was to be used for laments. Lope de Vega explored other dramatic genres as well: He wrote historical, mythological, religious, pastoral, and novelistic plays. He also wrote comedias de capa y espada (cape-and-sword plays), so called because they depicted contemporary situations, and the actors therefore wore street clothes, which included a cape and sword. These plays usually revolved around love and intrigues, misunderstandings, and tricks. The most famous are El perro del hortelano (wr. 1613-1615, pb. 1618; The Gardener’s Dog , 1903), based on one of Aesop’s fables about a dog that neither eats nor allows others to do so, and La dama boba (1617; The Lady Nit-Wit , 1958), based on the commonplace that love makes fools wise. Lope de Vega’s best-known works deal with events in Spanish history; others are based on legends.

Throughout his career, Lope de Vega argued for simplicity and naturalness on stage. When, in the seventeenth century, complex productions with special effects and complicated stage devices came into fashion, he opposed them. He also resisted the trend toward ornate language that characterized baroque literature. Nevertheless, his later plays reflect the new tendencies. El castigo sin venganza (1635; Justice Without Revenge , 1936) contains many erudite passages that include allusions to history and mythology.

Although Lope de Vega is known primarily as a dramatist, he began his career as a poet and wrote much religious and secular poetry in his later years. He also wrote one of Spain’s greatest pastoral novels, La Arcadia (1598). Lope de Vega received many honors, among them membership in the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, which was conferred upon him in 1627. His funeral was a national event and is said to have lasted nine days.

Significance

Prior to Lope de Vega Carpio, Spanish theater was highly dependent on Italian themes and forms. Lope de Vega created a theater that was an authentic expression of the Spanish personality. Even when he depicted foreigners, his characters were always Spanish in essence. His objective was to entertain his audience rather than to instruct or edify. Unlike his best-known follower, Pedro Calderón de la Barca , who was a court dramatist, Lope de Vega wrote for an audience that was often rowdy. To please these undisciplined theatergoers, he wrote plays imbued with humor, wit, and action. Even his tragedies contain humor, usually introduced by the servants or graciosos.

Although his plays are not particularly philosophical, they reveal a deep understanding of human nature. Lope de Vega introduced a psychological element into the theater of his time, which was later developed by dramatists such as Tirso de Molina and Calderón. It is perhaps surprising to what degree Lope de Vega’s followers respected the norms he established. The Spanish play maintained its three-act format until the end of the seventeenth century and beyond. The basic character types, themes, and devices that Lope de Vega introduced were used by all the major Spanish playwrights of the Golden Age.

Vega Carpio’s Major Works

1596-1598

• Los comendadores de Córdoba

1596-1603

• El nuevo mundo descubierto por Cristóbal Colón (The Discovery of the New World by Christopher Columbus, 1950)

1598

• La Arcadia

1598

• La Dragontea

1599

• El Isidro

1599-1606

• El mayordomo de la duquesa de Amalfi (The Majordomo of the Duchess of Amalfi, 1951)

1602

• La hermosura de Angélica

1602

• Rimas

1602-1608

• El anzuelo de Fenisa

1603

• La corona merecida

1604

• El peregrino en su patria (The Pilgrim: Or, The Stranger in His Own Country, 1621)

1605

• La noche toledana

1606-1608

• Los melindres de Belisa

1606-1612

• El acero de Madrid (Madrid Steel, 1935)

1606-1612

• Castelvines y Monteses (English translation, 1869)

1607-1612

• La niña de plata

1609

• El arte nuevo de hacer comedias en este tiempo (The New Art of Writing Plays, 1914)

1609

• Jerusalén conquistada

1609-1612

• Peribáñez y el comendador de Ocaña (Peribáñez, 1936)

1610

• La buena guarda

1610-1615

• Las flores de don Juan, y rico y pobre trocados

1611

• El villano en su rincón (The King and the Farmer, 1940)

1611-1618

• Fuenteovejuna (The Sheep-Well, 1936)

1612

• Los pastores de Belén

1612-1624

• Lo cierto por lo dudoso (A Certainty for a Doubt, 1936)

1613-1615

• El perro del hortelano (The Gardener’s Dog, 1903)

1614

• Rimas sacras

1615-1626

• El caballero de Olmedo (The Knight from Olmedo, 1961)

1617

• La dama boba (The Lady Nit-Wit, 1958)

1620-1622

• Amar sin saber a quién

1620-1623

• El mejor alcalde, el rey (The King, the Greatest Alcalde, 1918)

1620-1628

• Los Tellos de Meneses I

1621

• La Circe

1621

• La filomena

1621

• Novelas a Marcia Leonarda

1624-1625

• El premio del bien hablar

1625

• Triunfos divinos

1625-1626

• La moza de cántaro

1627

• La corona trágica

1627-1635

• El guante de doña Blanca

1630

• Laurel de Apolo

1632

• La Dorotea

1633

• Amarilis

1634

• La gatomaquia (Gatomachia, 1843)

1634

• Rimas humanas y divinas del licenciado Tomé de Burguillos

1635

• Filis

1635

• El castigo sin venganza, pb. 1635 (based on Matteo Bandello’s novella; Justice Without Revenge, 1936)

1637

• Las bizarrías de Belisa

1637

• La Vega del Parnaso

1637

• Égloga a Claudio

Bibliography

Fitzmaurice-Kelly, James. Lope de Vega and the Spanish Drama. London: R. B. Johnson, 1902. Reprint. Brooklyn, N.Y.: Haskell House, 1970. An overview of the state of the Spanish theater at the time of Lope de Vega and of his innovations.

Fox, Dian. Refiguring the Hero: From Peasant to Noble in Lope de Vega and Calderón. University Park: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991. Fox reevaluates nine plays by Lope de Vega and Calderón within the larger context of European literary heroism.

Hayes, Francis C. Lope de Vega. Boston: Twayne, 1967. Contains historical and biographical information and an examination of the elements of Lope de Vega’s comedy. Analyzes genre, style, and technique for the beginning student.

Larson, Donald R. The Honor Plays of Lope de Vega. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977. An in-depth study of the evolution of Lope de Vega’s treatment of honor, starting with early plays, in which the characters adopt unconventional solutions, through the plays of the middle period, which include some of the most brutal scenes ever to appear on the Spanish stage, to the late plays, in which he tempers his approach.

Moir, Duncan, and Edward M. Wilson. The Golden Age Drama, 1492-1700. Vol. 3 in A Literary History of Spain. London: Ernest Benn, 1971. An overview of the development of Spanish theater from early Spanish masterpieces until the decline of baroque drama at the end of the seventeenth century. Special attention is paid to Lope de Vega, his innovations, his genius, and his influence.

Rennert, Hugo Albert. The Spanish Stage in the Time of Lope de Vega. Reprint. Mineola, N.Y.: Dover, 1963. An overview of the growth of Spanish theater, the development of the corrales, and Lope de Vega’s contributions.

Shergold, N. D. A History of the Spanish Stage from Medieval Times Until the End of the Seventeenth Century. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1967. Special attention is given to the corrales and Lope de Vega’s contribution to the development of a national theater. Contains essential information about the physical facilities in which his plays were performed.

Smith, Marlene K. The Beautiful Woman in the Theater of Lope de Vega: Ideology and Mythology of Female Beauty in Seventeenth Century Spain. New York: Peter Lang, 1998. Analyzes the dramatic function of beautiful women in Lope de Vega’s plays, placing these characters within a framework of medieval, Renaissance, and baroque and contemporary feminist concepts of beauty. One of several books about Lope de Vega published by Peter Lang, including Lope de Vega and the Comedia de Santos by Robert R. Morrison (2000) and The Recreation of History in the Fernando and Isabel Plays of Lope de Vega by Delys Ostlund (1997).

Wilson, Margaret. Spanish Drama of the Golden Age. Oxford, England: Pergamon Press, 1969. Describes the development and characteristics of the corrales and of Lope de Vega’s craftsmanship. Discusses his themes and techniques as well as his influence on subsequent writers.

Zuckerman-Ingber, Alix. El bien más alto: A Reconsideration of Lope de Vega’s Honor Plays. Gainesville: University Presses of Florida, 1984. Argues that critics have misjudged Lope de Vega’s attitude toward honor. Contends he does not condone the honor code but rather attacks it by showing the violent extremes to which the obsession with honor can lead. Explores Lope de Vega’s use of irony and his techniques of characterization in the honor plays, and how these convey his true attitude toward honor.