Lope de Vega: Life, Works, and Theater in Spain
Lope de Vega: Life and Adventures
Lope de Vega was born in Madrid. His life was a succession of adventures, love, and literary and passionate character. He had economic troubles, speaking of the literary life of his time. He had controversies with Cervantes, and his love life was intense, like that of Góngora. After several marriages, ten children, and numerous lovers, in his last years he turned to religion. He became a priest. Much of his work focuses on a deep religious feeling.
He had very influential friends like the Duke of Alba. The “Phoenix of Wits” died in Madrid in 1635. The Duke of Sesa was commissioned to pay for a funeral that lasted nine days. His massive funeral was attended by the whole of Madrid.
Work
Throughout his life, Lope de Vega cultivated almost all literary genres. He wrote lyric poetry, narrative prose and verse, and drama, the genre he is best known for.
Poetry
The Rhymes is a compilation work that includes a wide variety of poems: sonnets, eclogues, epistles, and even The New Art of Making Plays. Among all the texts collected in The Rhymes, the most outstanding are the sonnets. Their love theme and form make them, according to Gerardo Diego, the great poet of the Generation of ’27, a sentimental biography of the author.
Narrative
Arcadia, a pastoral novel, and the Byzantine-type novel The Pilgrims in Their Homeland are worth mentioning.
When Lope decided to write Arcadia, he already had many models, including Diana, by Jorge de Montemayor, or Cervantes’ Galatea. The Pilgrim at Home is a complicated adventure novel.
Theater: The New Comedy
Though Lope is the author of several mystery plays, such as The Heir of Heaven, the comedies are the most representative of his theatrical work. The comedia is a genre that sprang from the union of the Italian commedia dell’arte and Spanish Renaissance theater. To this union, Lope added sensitivity to capture the tastes of the public.
These are some of the most important titles:
- Religious: Good Care
- Mythological: The Steadiest Husband
- Pastoral: Belardo the Furious
- Historical: The Best Mayor, the King; The Physician of His Honor; Peribáñez and the Commander of Ocaña; Fuenteovejuna; The Knight of Olmedo
- Traditionalist: The Foolish Lady; The Dog in the Manger
Characteristics
As he wrote in his The New Art of Making Plays, Lope’s plays are mainly characterized by these features:
- Union of the tragic and the comic, and the noble or the popular.
- Breakdown of the three unities of classical theater. By mixing, works can be developed along different times and spaces of various types simultaneously.
- Utilization of various verses.
- Creation of intrigue to interest the public.
Characters
They function as archetypes, that is, they are stereotyped models, without a complex mental profile, who appear repeatedly in different works.
Among the most prominent are:
- The King: He is the supreme representative of justice and honor.
- The Gallant: He is brave, idealistic, generous, and handsome. He joins the lady in a bond of honor, love, and jealousy.
- The Lady: She is beautiful, witty, or noble. Of course, she loves the gallant.
- The Gracioso or Graciosa: He or she is faithful to the gallant, but represents values and attitudes opposed to this: common sense, realism, practicality, and love of money. Their characteristic feature is a sense of humor.
- The Villain: He is the inhabitant of the village who is dedicated to living with dignity and happiness, cultivating the land. His goodness and righteousness are based on the fact that he is a Christian man.
- The Powerful: He is a noble, arrogant, and unjust, motivated by selfish interests, who alters the relationship between the king and his subjects.