Lope de Vega (1562 - 1635) was a Spanish playwright, poet, and novelist, and the central figure of the theatre of the Spanish Golden Age. [1] He wrote an extraordinary number of works for the stage, of which several hundred survive, and set out the principles of the popular Spanish drama in his verse treatise Arte nuevo de hacer comedias en este tiempo. [2] Cervantes called him a "monster of nature" for his fluency, and his plays remain in the standing repertoire of the Spanish-language theatre.
Early life
Félix Lope de Vega Carpio was born in Madrid on 25 November 1562 into a family of modest means; his father was an embroiderer who had come to the capital from the mountains of Cantabria. [1] He showed precocious talent, reportedly composing verse before he could write, and was educated at the Colegio Imperial run by the Jesuits in Madrid, later attending the University of Alcalá and the royal Academy of Mathematics.
His young adulthood was turbulent. A libellous attack on a former lover's family led to a sentence of exile from Madrid in 1588, and in the same period he served aboard the Spanish Armada in its campaign against England. [2] He subsequently worked as a secretary to a succession of noble patrons, most notably the Duke of Sessa.
The comedia nueva
Lope transformed the Spanish stage by developing the comedia nueva, a three-act verse drama that mixed tragic and comic elements, varied its metres according to situation, and set aside the classical unities in favour of action calculated to hold a paying public. [3] He described this practice in Arte nuevo de hacer comedias en este tiempo (1609), a poem addressed to a Madrid literary academy which defends writing for the taste of the audience.
His output was immense. Early biographers credited him with some 1,500 to 1,800 plays, and roughly four hundred survive, along with hundreds of religious one-act pieces. [1] Recurrent subjects include honour, love across social ranks, Spanish history, and the relationship between village communities and their lords.
Major works
Fuenteovejuna, probably written in the 1610s, dramatises a village that collectively kills its tyrannical commander and, under interrogation, answers every question with the name of the town itself. [4] El caballero de Olmedo turns a popular song into a tragedy of foreboding, while Peribáñez y el comendador de Ocaña again sets peasant dignity against noble abuse. Lighter comedies such as El perro del hortelano and La dama boba show his command of romantic intrigue.
He also wrote prose and non-dramatic verse throughout his life, including the pastoral romance La Arcadia, the epic La Dragontea, and La Dorotea, a late dialogue novel drawing on his own love affairs. [2]
Later life and legacy
After the deaths of his second wife and a son, Lope was ordained a priest in 1614, though his private life continued to attract comment. In 1627 Pope Urban VIII granted him a doctorate in theology and the cross of the Order of Malta. [1] He died in Madrid on 27 August 1635, and his funeral drew crowds across the city.
Lope's model of drama shaped Spanish playwriting for a century, providing the framework within which Tirso de Molina and Calderón de la Barca worked, and supplying plots reused across European theatre. [3] His name is preserved in Madrid's Teatro Español tradition and in the Casa Museo Lope de Vega, the house where he spent his final years.
