Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616) had a daughter
by Ana Franca de Rojas a year or two before he married
19-year-old Catalina de Salazar y Palacio
of Equivas on December 12, 1584.
They lived together for the remainder of his life,
but his wife had no children.
The death of his father in 1585 left Cervantes with responsibility
for a household that included sisters and a niece.
That year he published the pastoral novel, La Galatea,
and sold the license to print it for 1,336 reals;
but the second part he promised never appeared
even though he considered this his favorite book.
In 1587 he was commissioned to collect wheat
and oil in Andalucia for the Armada.
In May 1590 he applied for four positions in the
American colonies but was turned down.
He ran up his own debts and in 1592 was arrested.
He was released on bail and continued his official work
until 1594 when he collected taxes in Granada.
He was imprisoned again for suspected debt
because of irregularities in his accounts in 1597.
He was held for three months and never worked in public
service again, but he was apparently in prison at Seville
in 1602 while writing Don Quixote.
In Voyage to Parnassus Cervantes narrated his imaginary
journey to the sacred mountain where Apollo rules over
the Muses, but this book published in 1614
is mainly a review of contemporary poets.
In 1615 he was paid for the publication of eight plays
and eight new interludes which had not been performed.
The Bagnios of Algiers reflects his experience as a captive
and portrays a romance between a valued Christian soldier,
Don Lope, and the Moor Zara,
who wants to become a Christian.
The Great Sultana describes Ottoman life in their capital.
The eight interludes are short farces.
His last work, The Labors of Persiles and Sigismunda,
is based on the Ethiopian History by Heliodorus
from the third century which had been discovered and printed
in 1534, and Cervantes finished it in early March 1616
the month before his death in Madrid on April 23.
In 1617 Persiles and Sigismunda was published, and within
two years it was translated into French twice and into English.
This last novel by Cervantes reflects the religious aspirations
of a dying man who admits in the prolog
that he does not want to give up drinking.
Cervantes published the first part of The Ingenious Gentleman
Don Quixote of La Mancha in January 1605, but that year
he and his family were arrested for his killing a famous rake.
The novel was popular and had several printings.
Cervantes returned with the court to Madrid in 1607
and was saved by the success of Don Quixote
from investigation of his accounts in Andalucia.
In 1609 he was admitted into a new religious fraternity,
the Slaves of the Most Blessed Sacrament.
The first translation of Don Quixote was
in English by Thomas Shelton in 1612.
That year Cervantes joined the new
literary club, Academia Selvaje.
He completed the second part
of Don Quixote in February 1615.
From 1617 on Don Quixote was published with both parts.
After a humble prolog and a few sonnets to the characters,
Cervantes began his long novel by describing the
“famous gentleman Don Quixote” who spent so much leisure
time reading books of chivalry that his reason became unhinged.
His imagination was carried away by what he read in books
about enchantments, battles, challenges, wounds, courting, love,
torment, and other follies.
With his mind gone he got the idea of serving his nation by
becoming a knight errant and traveling the world to right
wrongs and win everlasting fame.
He saw the peasant girl Aldonea Lorenzo
and called his lady “Dulcinea of Toboso.”
Determined to undo evils, right wrongs, correct injustices,
ameliorate abuses, and rectify offenses
he leaves home before dawn in July.
He comes to an inn and sees it as a castle, and two prostitutes
he takes as fair damsels; they and others laugh at him
but humor him by going along with his fantasies.
The innkeeper agrees to dub him a knight;
but mule-drivers are not so cooperative, and they fight.
The next day Don Quixote sees a farmer
whipping his servant-boy, and the knight
threatens to punish the man and gets him to stop.
Don Quixote comes across merchants and demands
that they praise his Dulcinea.
They quarrel, and a mule-driver thrashes the knight.
A farmer recognizes him as the honorable Señor Quixano,
but the knight claims he is a peer
of France and one of the paragons.
A priest notes that books have caused him to lose his fine mind.
They go through most of his library and decide which books
to burn; they mostly choose those about chivalry,
but some are burned without being examined.
His niece asks her uncle if it would not be better
if he stayed home in peace rather than go wandering.
Don Quixote offers to make Sancho Panza his squire
and says he will win him an island to govern,
and the man whose last name means “Paunch”
gladly accepts and leaves his family.
In their first adventure together Don Quixote attacks a windmill
thinking it is a monster and gets into a fight with a Basque.
Sancho suggests they take refuge in a church,
but Don Quixote says a knight is never brought before the law
no matter how many murders he commits.
They are given food by goatherds who tell them a story
about a man who was driven to suicide by the beautiful
but chaste shepherdess Marcela.
A traveler asks the knight why he goes about
armed during peacetime, but Don Quixote justifies it
as the work of soldiers to defend the world.
He is also asked why knights are always devoted
to a lady instead of to God.
Don Quixote contends they are religious
but that every knight must have a lady.
Marcela explains that a beauty cannot be expected
to satisfy the desires of every man who wants her.
At night the horse Rocinante is not tethered
and goes after some mares who attack him.
Don Quixote and Sancho find them, and the knight insists on
punishing the Yanguesans, though Sancho warns
there are more than twenty of them.
They are both thrashed, and Don Quixote loses several teeth.
They find an inn, which the knight says is a castle.
That night Don Quixote, even though he is loyal to Dulcinea,
puts his arms around a woman
who is going to pleasure a mule-driver.
They all fight in the dark.
Afterward Sancho asks for the remedy of rosemary, oil, salt,
and wine, and he and the knight end up vomiting on each other.
The knight and Sancho refuse to pay for the lodging,
and men toss Sancho in a blanket; but the innkeeper
takes their saddle-bags of food as payment.
Don Quixote wants revenge, but Sancho says
they are going “from pillar to post and from bad to worse.”
On the road they see dust clouds from two flocks of sheep,
but Don Quixote says they are two armies,
attacks, and kills seven animals.
The shepherds beat them up.
Next they meet twenty soldiers with a funeral procession,
and the angry knight attacks one of them.
One man has his leg broken.
Sancho steals some food and names his master the
“Knight of the Sorrowful Face.”
They move on but have nothing to drink.
Sancho warns his master not to seek evil.
At night they hear a loud sound, and Don Quixote insists
on attacking again; but Sancho hobbles
the knight’s horse to prevent that.
In the morning they discover the sound is from a mill.
Don Quixote says proverbs are always true,
such as “One door closes, and another opens.”
He sees a man wearing the golden helmet of Mambrino,
but it is a barber covered by his brass shaving basin
because of the rain.
The knight demands he hand over what is rightfully his,
and the barber complies.
As they go on, Sancho suggests they serve some emperor
or great prince in a war so that he can get his reward;
but the knight says he must first gain
a reputation by seeking adventures.
They come across men chained and being taken
to serve their sentences as galley slaves.
Don Quixote wants to liberate them
but first asks them about their crimes.
One is the famous Ginesillo de Parapilla who uses the proverb,
“Man proposes, and God disposes.”
He is the kind of thief often portrayed in the popular
picaresque novels such as Lazarillo de Tormes.
The knight reasons that honorable men should not persecute
other men who have not harmed them,
and he knocks the commissary to the ground
and helps the galley slaves break free.
When the knight orders them to take their chains and testify
to his lady, they throw rocks at him,
steal Sancho’s coat, and run away.
Don Quixote and Sancho are afraid the Holy Brotherhood
will come after them, and so they go into the mountains to hide.
They find a case with shirts, money, and a diary.
The knight reads in the diary poems by a scorned lover,
and they find the tattered knight Cardenio
who tells them his sad story.
He and Luscinda plan to marry, but the lusty
Don Fernando persuades her to marry him.
At the wedding she says, “I do” and faints,
and Cardenio runs off to the mountains.
When Don Quixote interrupts the story,
Cardenio knocks him down and leaves them.
Don Quixote decides to do chivalrous penance.
When Sancho asks why, the knight claims that a great
achievement is to lose one’s reason for no reason
so that he can persuade his lady
what he would do if he had a cause.
He writes a letter to Dulcinea and sends Pancho
to deliver it so that he can get three mules.
The knight takes off his clothes except his shirt.
Pancho goes back to the inn but dares not enter.
Outside he confers with the priest and the barber,
and they come up with a plan
to have a lady ask Don Quixote for a favor.
They return to the mountains
and learn the rest of Cardenio’s story.
They see the beautiful Dorotea and learn her sad story of love,
how Don Fernando promised to marry her
and then wedded Luscinda.
Cardenio tells her his situation, and he learns that
after the wedding Luscinda declared she really loves Cardenio.
Dorotea agrees to play the role of the lady
because she has read novels about chivalry.
They find Don Quixote, and she makes her appeal to him,
pretending to be Princess Micomicona.
The knight agrees to grant her boon, and she gets his
commitment to right her wrong
before engaging in any other adventure.
Sancho urges him to marry her,
but the knight
knocks him down for insulting the beauty of Dulcinea.
The boy whom Don Quixote had freed from punishment
finds them and says that after the knight left,
his master refused to pay him
and punished him even more in revenge.
At the inn the priest reads to them the novel,
The Man Who Was Recklessly Curious.
Then Sancho reports that Don Quixote is battling the giant
and has cut his head off, but the innkeeper finds that
the knight has slashed skins of red wine
which he thinks is blood.
Four men, a woman in white, and two servants arrive at the inn.
Don Fernando recognizes Dorotea,
and he and Luscinda see Cardenio.
Dorotea swoons and explains to Don Fernando
that she is his true wife.
He releases Luscinda, who is embraced by Cardenio.
Don Fernando gallantly accepts Dorotea,
and they are all very happy.
Only Sancho is sad to learn that
Dorotea is not Queen Micomicona.
Luscinda had gone into a convent, but they abducted her.
Don Quixote has been sleeping.
Don Fernando urges Dorotea to go on playing Micomicona
so that they can cure the errant knight.
A man and a young woman dressed like Moors arrive.
During dinner Don Quixote discusses the differences
between the lives of a literary man and a soldier,
and he condemns those who invent worse weapons of war.
The man tells how he was a soldier and was captured by the
Moors and ransomed and his adventures with the beautiful
Zoraida who became his wife and a Christian.
A judge and his daughter arrive at the inn and are surprised
to hear the knight call it a castle.
The judge learns that the man, who was captured,
is his brother, Captain Viedma.
That night Don Quixote stands outside
the inn to guard the castle.
Young Don Luis has run away from his family,
and four men have been sent by his father to bring him home.
The barber wants his basin and pack-saddle taken by
the knight and his squire returned to him,
but they argue that they were taken in “righteous combat.”
An officer from the Holy Brotherhood comes to arrest
Don Quixote; but the priest explains
to them that he is mentally ill.
The priest pays the barber for the basin.
The innkeeper demands to be paid also,
and Don Fernando covers their bill.
The barber and the priest arrange for Don Quixote to be
put in a cage on an oxcart so that he can be taken home
and cured of his madness.
As they travel, the priest and a canon
discuss books of chivalry with the knight.
The priest refers to Cicero’s comment on drama,
that it:
should be a mirror of human life,
an example of customs, and an image of truth,
but those that are produced these days are
mirrors of nonsense, examples of foolishness,
and images of lewdness.1
Don Quixote promises he will not escape,
and he is released from the cage.
One evening during their journey
a goatherd tells them of his adventures.
When the goatherd implies that
Don Quixote has an empty head,
the knight hits him in the face with a loaf of bread.
They fight as others laugh until the knight
hears a trumpet and suggests a truce.
Penitents arrive with an image of the Blessed Virgin,
but the errant knight says they are taking a lady
against her will and charges with his sword which breaks.
Then a man wounds the knight’s shoulder.
They come home, and Sancho’s wife asks
what he has earned and brought her.
Don Quixote is welcomed and put to bed
by his housekeeper and niece.
Thus ends the First Part of the novel Don Quixote.
The Second Part is dedicated to Don Pedro Fernandez
de Castro, the Count of Lemnos
who was Viceroy of Naples 1610-16
and a patron of Cervantes and other writers.
Cervantes was concerned that an anonymous second part
of Don Quixote had been published at Tarragona.
For a month Don Quixote is cared for
by his housekeeper and niece.
He becomes concerned that the Turks are threatening
Christendom and notes that King Felipe III
is fortifying the coasts of Naples and Sicily.
He tells his niece that he will die a knight errant because
he will take responsibility for “the defense of kingdoms,
the protection of damsels, the safeguarding of orphans
and wards, the punishment of the proud,
and the rewarding of the humble.”2
Sancho tells him that a book has been published about him
and that the common people consider the knight a madman,
and Sancho admits he is a simpleton.
The knight is thought to be “crazy but amusing,
brave but unfortunate, and courteous but insolent.”
Don Quixote decides to go to a tournament at Zaragoza.
The knight and Sancho talk with the bachelor
Sanson Carrasco who notes that a poet writes about things
as they should have been while
the historian writes about how they were.
Sancho has a pleasant talk with his wife Teresa
and tells her he is going away with the knight again.
She thinks he should be paid for his service,
but Don Quixote explains to Sancho that he never read
of a knight errant paying his squire a salary.
Supplied with provisions, money,
and Sancho’s old donkey they set out for Toboso.
On the road they discuss different ways of living,
and Sancho says they should begin by being saints.
Don Quixote replies that chivalry is also a religion,
but there are more friars than errant knights.
At midnight they arrive in Toboso and look for Dulcinea,
but neither man has ever seen her.
The next day Sancho sees three peasant women on donkeys
and tells his master that Dulcinea is one of them.
The knight speaks to her, and she gallops off
and is thrown to the ground.
Don Quixote goes to help her up, but she stands up quickly,
jumps on her donkey, and rides off.
He complains she is ugly and smells of garlic,
and he assumes Dulcinea has been transformed.
Don Quixote and Sancho see a small troupe of actors,
and the leader who plays the Devil
rides off on Sancho’s donkey.
The knight reprimands them for their bad treatment of animals,
and they prepare to throw stones at him;
but Sancho says none of them are knights
and persuades the knight not to fight.
He urges his squire to fight them,
but Sancho says good Christians do not take revenge.
At night they meet the Knight of the Wood who says that
his lady Casilda of Vandalia has been honored as most beautiful
by several knights including Don Quixote of La Mancha.
The squire with the large nose shares food and wine
with Sancho, and they compare their lives.
Don Quixote challenges the Knight of the Mirrors
for claiming he has defeated him,
and in the morning they prepare to fight.
Don Quixote gets his old horse to gallop, and the other knight
stands his ground and is knocked off his horse.
Don Quixote demands that the knight go to Dulcinea,
and he agrees.
The knight reveals that he is Sanson Carrasco,
and without the false nose Sancho recognizes the squire
as his neighbor Tomé Cecial.
Their plan had been to defeat Don Quixote
and make him return to his village
and stay there two years.
Don Quixote meets Don Diego de Miranda who
is concerned that his son wants to study poetry,
but the knight persuades him that it is a noble calling.
He quotes Ovid who wrote, “Est Deus in nobis”
which means “God is in us.”
The knight shows his courage and recklessness
by challenging a lion, who is released from his cage
but turns around and goes back in.
He renames himself the “Knight of the Lions.”
Don Quixote meets Diego’s son, the poet Don Lorenzo,
and explains to him why the science of knight errantry
must include being a jurist, a theologian, a physician,
an herbalist, an astrologer, and a mathematician
as well as being virtuous and knowing how to swim,
shoe a horse, and repair a saddle and bridle.
He must have faith in God and his lady, be chaste,
honest, liberal, valiant, long-suffering, charitable,
and an upholder of the truth.
However, he notes that what triumphs now are people’s
sins of sloth, idleness, gluttony, and self-indulgence.
Don Quixote and Sancho are invited to the wedding
of the wealthy Camacho who is to marry beautiful Quiteria;
but the poor poet Basilio is also in love with her
and intends to commit suicide with surprising results.
The knight stops a fight
and orders Sancho to leave the elegant feast.
In an apocryphal story later denied by the knight,
Don Quixote is lowered into a cave by a rope for an hour.
When brought back, he awakes and tells of his dreamlike
experience of three days in which he sees the
three peasant women and gives Dulcinea
the only money he has with him.
Master Pedro has a monkey whom he claims
can tell people the present and the past.
Don Quixote says that for God there is no past
or future because everything is present.
Pedro puts on a puppet show for them, but the knight
destroys
the Moorish puppets who are chasing the heroes on horses.
Pedro demands to be paid for his loss,
and the knight gives him nearly 45 reales.
They find out that Pedro is Ginesillo de Parapilla
whom the knight freed from the chain gang.
Before entering Zaragoza they come across
a squadron of soldiers, and Don Quixote lectures them on their
duty, saying that prudent men only fight for four reasons:
to defend the Catholic faith; in self-defense; to defend honor,
family or fortune; and to serve the King in a just war.
He even argues that no revenge can be just because
holy law commands them to do good to their enemies
and love those who hate them.
Thus by God and humanity they are obliged to make peace.
Then Sancho begins talking and brays like a mule.
A man knocks him to the ground with a long pole.
Facing many crossbows and arquebuses,
the knight quickly gallops away.
The soldiers do not follow but send Sancho
on his donkey after him.
Sancho is in pain and wants to quit, and the knight offers
to pay him a salary for all his days of service;
Sancho decides to stay.
Don Quixote persuades Sancho to go on a fishing boat
with him; but near a mill it is smashed to pieces,
and the millers rescue them; the knight pays fifty reales
to the fisherman for his boat.
They meet a beautiful Duchess hunting, and she invites
them to stay with her and the Duke in their castle.
They have been reading about his adventures
and like hearing Sancho talk.
The Duke questions whether he is really
a knight errant and urges him to go home.
The indignant Don Quixote challenges him to equal combat.
However, the Duke offers Sancho an insula to govern,
and the squire kneels and kisses his feet.
The Duke and Duchess promise to have Dulcinea
disenchanted, and a courier arrives who says
he is the devil and will help them disenchant her.
The Duke says that Sancho must receive 3,300 lashes,
though he can inflict them upon himself;
then the beautiful Dulcinea will appear.
Sancho is persuaded to try and dictates a letter to his wife.
One of the Duke’s stewards pretends to be the dolorous
Countess Trifaldi and tells the knight and Sancho
that they must ride while blindfolded the magical
horse Clavileño through the sky
to remove the beards from enchanted duennas.
These and other elaborate games were devised by the
Duke and Duchess to make fun of the knight and his squire.
Don Quixote advises Sancho to be a merciful and just
governor and not to use so many proverbs,
and Sancho goes to govern the Insula Barataria.
He immediately begins judging cases to settle disputes
and shows his cleverness at discerning who is in the wrong.
Meanwhile at the castle the girl Altisidora is pretending that
she is in love with the knight who is still faithful to Dulcinea.
A doctor dismisses food to protect the Governor’s health,
and Sancho has trouble getting enough to eat.
The page who impersonated Dulcinea brings Sancho’s letter
and one from the Duchess to Teresa Panza,
who is thrilled to get a letter from her husband Governor
and a string of corals from the Duchess.
Doña Rodriguez appeals to Don Quixote to get the man
who abandoned her daughter to marry her,
and the knight promises to challenge the man to do so.
Governor Panza is warned to take up arms against an invasion
and is put in armor that traps him like a tortoise in a shell.
He learns the enemy has retreated, and they are victors.
Sancho complains he is beset by troubles,
and he announces he is leaving the governorship
without taking any money with him.
They say he must make an accounting,
and he promises he will do so to the Duke.
A royal proclamation is forcing the
Moriscos (former Muslims) to leave Spain.
On his way Sancho falls into a deep hole and cries out for help.
Don Quixote comes along and rescues him.
Sancho says he quit and did not even have time
to take any bribes or collect fees;
he did not try to implement his proposed laws
because they would not be enforced.
The knight is prepared to fight the footman Tosilos
to make him marry the Duenna’s daughter,
but the man says he wants to marry her.
The knight tells the Duke he is leaving
to participate in a tournament at Zaragoza.
On the road Don Quixote and Sancho enjoy their freedom
and consider it the greatest gift
with captivity being the worst thing.
The knight wants to whip Sancho so that
Dulcinea can be restored, but the squire overcomes him
physically and makes him agree to let
Sancho use his own free will in the lashing.
They meet some Catalan thieves who commit
a robbery but fairly distribute the money.
Sancho notes that justice is such
a great good that even thieves use it.
They arrive at Barcelona and learn
the fate of a refugee Morisca.
Don Quixote is challenged to a joust by the
Knight of the White Moon and is defeated.
He agrees to go home to his village
and give up knight errantry for one year.
Thus the Bachelor Sanson Carrasco
achieved his objective on the second try.
Don Quixote decides to become a shepherd
with help from Sancho and others.
They visit the Duke’s castle and see the funeral
of Altisidora who turns out to be alive.
The knight and Sancho travel to their village
and are welcomed home.
Don Quixote gets a fever and stays in bed.
He dictates his will and realizes that he was badly affected
by books of chivalry and plans to read better books.
He says he is no longer a knight but is only Alonso Quixano
who was called the Good because of his virtuous life.
After completing his will he collapses and dies three days later.
This novel is very popular because of its humor
and entertainment value as an adventure story
with amusing characters and incidents;
but it also satirizes the warlike customs of imperial Spain
by portraying a knight following the medieval code
of heroic chivalry in which he tries to fight
for what he thinks is right.
Such picking of fights for flighty reasons with peculiar
rationalizations to try to fit everything into his prejudices
is considered madness by the other characters.
Yet the knight and his squire both exhibit much knowledge
of the world and wisdom in other ways.
Their ineptness keeps them from doing too much damage,
and they are the ones who suffer most of the time.
Medieval chivalry is already absurd in that era;
but the story also reflects how novels and in our era
movies can use the depiction of violence
to obtain popularity as the heroes
rarely are badly hurt or killed.
Yet the conflicts and violence played out in fantasies during
fading empires still symbolizes the tremendous
suffering that results from imperial wars.
Cervantes published twelve Exemplary Novels in August 1613.
In the Prologue to this collection of short novellas
Cervantes explained that he called them exemplary because
“some profitable example” can be extracted
from each one of them.
He also intended to entertain because
time for recreation enables a tormented spirit to rest.
At the beginning of the first exemplary novel,
“The Little Gypsy Girl,” Cervantes admits that gypsies are
brought up to be thieves and become
expert in this dangerous occupation.
Putting that ethical issue aside, Preciosa is a beautiful
15-year-old girl and an entrancing dancer
with remarkable wisdom and virtue.
She attracts a young poet who sells
her “clean” ballads for her to sing.
She explains how young gypsies learn quickly by experience.
She notes that no poet knows how to
hold on to his money nor how to acquire money.
Don Juanico falls in love with her and becomes a gypsy
even though she will not marry him for two years.
He gives up being a gentleman, is initiated, and is called Andrés.
He gives the gypsies 200 gold crowns, and not liking to steal,
he secretly buys things and pretends that he stole them.
When the poet arrives and is called Clemente,
Andrés becomes jealous.
Clemente has 400 gold crowns but is fleeing
after having killed two men in a fight.
Juana Carducha asks Andrés to marry her, but he declines.
As the gypsies are leaving, she hides her jewels
in his bundle and accuses him of robbing her.
A soldier picks a fight with Andrés
who takes his sword away and kills him.
He is arrested, but by an extraordinary series of discoveries,
everything is happily resolved.
This story shows that even a tribe that lives
by stealing can be virtuous in other ways.
In “The Generous Lover” the Christian Ricardo is captured
by Turks on Cyprus and becomes
friends with his captor Mahamut.
Ricardo is in love with the beautiful Christian Leonisa,
and with Mahamut’s help he contrives a way to ransom her
and himself that involves playing off the old
and new pasha (viceroy), a Cadi, and a Jew.
When free, Ricardo generously offers to let his rival lover
Cornelio have Leonisa and his estate; but Ricardo changes
his mind, and she declares her love for the one
who saved her and marries Ricardo.
“Rinconete and Cortadillo” is about two 14-year-old boys
who cheat at cards and snatch purses on their way to Seville
where bad government allows crime to run rampant.
Amid this competition the boys are admitted into the school
of Monipodio who controls the thieves.
He modifies the boys’ names and lets them
skip a year of apprenticeship.
Unscrupulous people hire bullies to attack their enemies,
and the police collect protection money.
At the end of the story Rinconete wants to reform
but for a while continues on in the school of crime.
“The Spanish English Girl” is a romantic adventure in which
the Spanish girl Isabella was captured
during a raid on Cadiz and brought up in England.
The English officer Ricaredo, who is also a Catholic,
falls in love with her and goes off to fight the Turks.
Near Gibraltar he rescues her parents from Turkish pirates.
Queen Elizabeth gives him Isabella as a prize,
and she is reunited with her mother and father.
Count Arnesto also falls in love with Isabella and challenges
Ricaredo to mortal combat;
but the Queen has the Count arrested.
A lady-in-waiting tries to poison Isabella
who survives but loses her beauty.
Ricaredo sees her virtue and still loves her,
and after two months her beauty has returned.
They promise to marry, and he refuses to marry a Scots lady
as his parents wanted.
Isabella and her parents return to Spain,
and she waits for Ricaredo.
He goes to the Mediterranean and is captured by Turks;
but he is ransomed and returns to Seville
just before Isabella is to enter a convent.
The story is intended to teach the power of virtue and beauty.
“The Glass Graduate” is about Tomas Rodaja who dedicates
himself to learning in Italy, but a tempting woman
gives him a quince which poisons him.
In his weakened condition and madness he is so afraid
of dying that he believes he is made of glass.
Yet he is able to entertain people with his knowledge by
answering their questions and becomes very popular.
His frank comments are often satirical.
Eventually a friar heals him,
and he regains his reason and judgment.
Rodaja earns a law degree from Salamanca University
and becomes a lawyer; but now
when he answers questions, people lose interest.
He goes to Flanders and becomes a valiant soldier.
As in Don Quixote, this story combines
a form of insanity with satire.
In “The Power of Blood” the young gentleman Rodolfo rapes
the beautiful Leocadia while she is unconscious;
but another time she is able to defend herself.
Her father tells her that virtue is true honor,
and only sin is dishonor, and therefore she is honorable.
She becomes pregnant and secretly
gives the child to others for four years.
She lives according to Christian charity and eventually is
honored to marry Rodolfo who now loves her for her virtue.
“The Jealous Old Man from Extremadura” is about
Felipo de Carrizales who while young is
promiscuous and then works hard in Peru.
Many years later he returns to Spain in old age and marries
young Leonora so that he can shape her.
He keeps his house closed, but young Loaysa is intrigued
and plays guitar for the servant Luis who helps him
ind his way in to teach Leonora the joys of love
while Carrizales is sleeping.
Before he dies, the old man gallantly doubles
her dowry so that she can marry Loaysa.
However, she becomes a nun instead.
In “The Illustrious Kitchen-Maid” Don Diego de Carriazo and
Tomas de Avendaño tell their parents they want to go study at
Salamanca, but instead they send their tutor home with a letter,
sell their mules, and adopt the poor clothes of rogues (picaros).
At the Sevillano Inn in Toledo they see the beautiful
kitchen-maid Costanza, and Tomas falls in love with her.
Diego uses the name Lope, and they work in the inn.
The Corregidor’s son also loves Costanza,
and the Corregidor learns that her parents are nobles.
Costanza marries Tomas,
and Diego weds the Corregidor’s daughter.
“The Two Damsels” is about four young nobles.
At an inn Teodosia is suffering because Marco Antonio
promised to marry her and had his way with her
but has abandoned her to keep his freedom.
He has also promised to marry Leocadia and deserted her
without having been intimate with her.
Both girls want revenge and dress as men.
At the inn Teodosia tells her brother Rafael what happened.
He says they will find his fellow student, Marco Antonio,
in Barcelona and advises her to use the name Teodoro
whom Leocadia thinks is a man.
Rafael falls in love with the noble Leocadia
whom the jealous Teodosia considers her enemy.
At Barcelona they see a fight on the shore, and in the brawl
Marco Antonio’s head is injured by a rock.
All four stay at an inn.
As Marco Antonio is recovering, Leocadia reminds him
of the promise he made to her; but he explains
that he has kept his promise to Teodosia.
Rafael says that his sister can be his
and presents her as his wife; they are reconciled.
Then Rafael tells and shows Leocadia that he loves her,
and they are married too.
Marco Antonio wants to go on a pilgrimage to Santiago
to be healed, and they accompany him.
The fathers of the girls had challenged his father,
but this is also resolved.
This story shows how strong passions
and jealousy can be overcome by love.
“Lady Cornelia” is another story about aristocrats,
but it takes place in Italy.
At a wedding the Duke of Ferrara meets
the usually secluded Cornelia.
He manages to see her, and she becomes pregnant.
His dying mother does not want him to marry her.
The Duke tries to protect the baby which is mistakenly given
to the Spaniard, Don Juan de Gamboa.
When the Duke is attacked, Juan rescues him.
Juan’s friend, Don Antonio de Isunza, finds abandoned Cornelia
and takes her into his home where she is reunited with her child.
Her brother Lorenzo asks Juan to help him find the Duke
so that his family’s honor can be restored.
Eventually the two Spaniards reconcile the Duke and Lorenzo;
but Cornelia has left with a housekeeper, and the men find
only a prostitute, who is also called Cornelia, sleeping with
a page, contrasting the morality of the
aristocrats and the common people.
The Duke visits a priest and happens to find Cornelia
and his son there, and they are married.
This story implies the imperial influence of Spain in Italy.
The last two stories in Cervantes’
Exemplary Novels are interrelated.
In “The Deceitful Marriage” Ensign Campuzano tells the
well educated Peralta how he suffered from his marriage to
30-year-old Estefania de Caicedo who falsely told him that
she owned the house in which she was living,
though he admits he also tried to
deceive her about how well off he is.
Soon after they are married, he learns that she has to leave
that house; but she steals his clothes,
and he ends up in the hospital with a venereal disease.
Then the Ensign says he will tell the incredulous Peralta
about a dialog he heard in the hospital between two dogs.
“The Dialogue of the Dogs” satirizes Spanish society by
accounts from a dog’s perspective.
Berganza tells Cipion what he has learned about people
from observing the masters he has served.
Cipion notes that dogs are appreciated
for their memories, gratitude, and loyalty.
Berganza tells how his first owner works in a slaughterhouse
where the employees keep the best meat for themselves.
Those skilled with knives often fight and cut each other.
When his angry master tries to cut him, the dog escapes.
He joins shepherds but finds that their lives
are not like those in pastoral poetry.
They use the excuse of wolves to blame the dogs
and take the best sheep for themselves.
He goes back to Seville and serves a rich merchant,
and he is well fed.
He notices that children learn to do wrong and seek vengeance.
An African woman bribes him with food so that she can secretly
visit her lover; but when she is about to poison him, he leaves.
His next owner is a police officer who appears to be courageous
at arresting criminals, but he is actually bribed by them
to put on a show and go after their competitors.
The dog obeys a magistrate and attacks his
corrupt master and is allowed to escape.
He is adopted by a drummer among soldiers
and sees what thugs and deserters they are.
He is taught two dozen tricks and performs for people.
The drummer accuses a woman of being a sorceress,
and she expels him from a hospital and takes over the dog.
She advises her son to be as good as he can
and when bad, to try not to appear so.
After she dies, the dog goes to a gypsy camp.
He observes they are busy perfecting tricks
so they can steal things.
In Granada he escapes from the gypsies and serves a Morisco.
He notes they are not chaste and not religious
nor are they involved in war.
He finds his master mean, and one day learns he is a poet.
His play is produced, and the dog is trained to act on stage.
He joins two other acting companies but is wounded
and taken to the hospital where he meets an alchemist
and a political theorist who suggests the Cortes could require
men to fast once a month and give the money to the King.
Cipion likes the stories and promises
to tell about his masters too.
Lope Felix de Vega Carpio was born on December 2, 1562
in a working-class district of Madrid.
The poet Vicente Espinel taught him Castilian and Latin,
and Lope studied at the Jesuit Imperial College and at the
University of Alcala de Henares until he was twenty.
He was influenced by the works of Plautus, Terence, Seneca,
Virgil, Horace, and Ovid with whom he felt a special kinship.
He participated in the Spanish expedition against the Azores
in 1583 and for the next four years
he served the Marqués de Las Navas.
During those years he wrote plays for the theater company
of Jeronimo Velazquez and had an affair
with his married daughter, Elena Osorio.
After she chose a cardinal’s nephew as her lover,
he accused her parents of selling her as a prostitute.
Lope was arrested at a theater on December 29, 1587
and was convicted of libel.
In jail for 42 days he railed at Elena and her mother Inés
so much that his sentence was doubled to banishment from
Castile for two years and from Madrid for eight years.
Lope de Vega married 16-year-old Isabel de Alderete y Urbina
by proxy on May 10, 1588, and he joined the navy and was
on a ship in the armada that sailed for England on May 29;
his brother was wounded and died in his arms.
In December he and his wife settled in Valencia, but in 1590
they moved to Toledo and later to Alba de Torres near
Salamanca where he took university classes while
he was secretary to Francisco de Ribera Barrosos,
who later became the Duke of Alba.
His wife Isabel died during childbirth in early 1595,
followed by the child a few months later.
The next year he was accused of cohabiting
with the widow Antonia Trillo de Armenta.
In 1598 Lope de Vega published the pastoral romance,
La Arcadia and the epic poem Dragontea about the last
voyage of Spain’s enemy, Francis Drake.
That year Lope married Juana de Guardo
whose father was a wealthy butcher.
He became secretary to the Duke of Sarria
who later became the Count of Lemnos.
Lope made more money writing love letters for him
and others than he got from his plays.
In 1599 he became involved with Macaela de Lujan for
nearly two decades, and she bore him four children.
In 1602 he published 200 sonnets in Rhymes (Rimas).
His prose work, The Pilgrim in his Homeland
appeared in 1604.
From that year until 1608 Lope had two houses in Toledo,
one for his wife and the other for Macaela.
He had six children by his two wives and at least
ten illegitimate children from about ten women.
From 1605 until his death in 1635 most of the time
Lope de Vega was the secretary
and confidential advisor to the Duke of Sessa.
In 1609 Lope published his epic Jerusalem Reconquered
to show Spain’s contribution to the Crusades and
A New Way to Write Plays in Our Time, based on a lecture
he gave at the Academy in Madrid.
He indicated that his plays are for the common people.
He pioneered the three-act play with exposition in act 1,
plot complication in act 2, and climax and conclusion in act 3.
He abandoned the Aristotelian unities of time and place,
though he tried to have the time short within each act
while years might pass between acts.
He mixed comedy and tragedy, noble and base characters,
and a variety of verse forms.
He also admitted that he wrote for money.
Lope de Vega joined the Third Order of St. Francis
on September 26, 1611.
His son Carlos Felix died in 1612, and his wife Juana
passed on after childbirth on August 9, 1613.
Lope published Sacred Rhymes and renounced his earlier
dramas in 1614 and became a priest on May 24, the day
he began living with the actress Jeronima de Burgos;
but he left her to follow the actress
Lucia de Salcedo to Valencia.
The Duke was afraid of losing his services
and instigated a former mistress to seduce Lope
and return him to his job as secretary.
In 1616 Lope met 26-year-old Marta de Nevares
and wrote her poems calling her “Amarilis.”
Two years later her husband died.
She eventually went blind and lost her reason in 1622
but regained it before her death in 1632.
That year Lope published the autobiographical novel,
Dorotea in the form of a dialog with “Fernando”
representing himself, “Dorotea” Elena Osorio,
and “Teodora” her mother Inés.
More than 500 personal letters he wrote
between 1604 and 1633 have survived.
In 1634 Lope de Vega published Human and Divine Rhymes,
and he wrote a mock epic called The Battle of Cats.
He kept his house full of cats and experimented
with their responses to conditioning as Pavlov
would do with dogs three centuries later.
He sinned and repented often and confessed weekly.
In his last years he would flagellate himself.
He died of scarlet fever on August 27, 1635.
He was very famous, and people would parody
the Catholic ritual by saying, “I believe in Lope de Vega
all powerful, poet of heaven and earth.”
To say something is “Lopean” (Es de Lope)
meant that it is excellent.
Not only did the Catholic Church accept him as a priest,
but the Inquisition made him a judge and an official censor.
In 1627 Urban VIII granted him
an honorary doctorate in theology.
His funeral lasted nine days with more than 150 orations
even though officials tried to limit it.
Lope de Vega wrote his first play in verse, The True Lover
(El verdadero amante) when he was twelve years old.
His best plays were published in 25 volumes
of 12 plays each between 1604 and 1647.
The first eight volumes were published without his permission,
and he sued in 1616 and continued the series himself,
publishing and preparing volumes 9-22 before his death.
The last three volumes were published
in 1638, 1641, and 1647.
According to Juan Pérez de Montalban he wrote
1,800 secular plays and more than 400 shorter
autos sacramentales (religious acts),
but only about 426 plays and 42 autos remain.
Near the end of his life Lope de Vega
claimed that he wrote 1,500 plays.
Love, honor, and self-respect (pundonor) are primary
motivations in his plays, and they reflect
the chauvinism of imperial Spain in his time.
Spanish drama developed during the 16th century,
but only at the end of the 1580s did the government permit
plays on days other than Sundays and holidays.
A few years later Tuesdays and Thursdays were added along
with more religious holidays such as Shrovetide.
Doors opened at noon with plays beginning at 2 during the
cold half of the year, at 3 in the spring and at 4 in the summer.
The theater had to be empty one hour before sunset.
People came early to get a seat.
Women came in a separate door
and could only sit in the rear balcony.
Rowdy men stood in the courtyard and when displeased
threw fresh fruits and vegetables.
An orchestra played music.
Authors were usually paid about 450 reales
for a three-act play, but Lope usually got about twice that.
Felipe II closed the theaters because of the death of his
daughter Catherine of Savoy in November 1597,
but his son Felipe III re-opened them on April 17, 1599.
In 1600 a royal council of nine men formulated regulations
to control licentious portrayals and immodest dancing.
They banned women from acting in female parts
that were to be played by boys.
They prohibited monks and prelates from attending
performances during Lent and on Sundays during Advent;
churches and convents were allowed only devotional plays.
No theater company could stay in a town more than a month
nor play more than three days each week,
and only one company could play each month.
They tried to reduce the number of companies to four,
but 21 remained in 1603
when they changed the number allowed to eight.
More regulations were issued in 1608 and in 1615
when twelve companies were approved.
During the reign of Felipe IV (r. 1621-65)
palace theaters presented lavish productions.
Lope de Vega wrote The New World Discovered by
Christopher Columbus (El Nuevo mundo descubierto
por Cristobal Colon) about 1600.
In the first act Columbus asks the King of Portugal to support
his audacious expedition and sends his brother Bartolomé
to England’s Henry VII; but they are rejected.
Granada’s King Muhammad decides
to capitulate to King Fernando.
Columbus reasons that the curved shadow of the Earth
on the moon during an eclipse shows that the world is round,
and Imagination and Religion persuade him to persevere.
Fernando and Queen Isabel agree to fund his voyage west.
In the second act Columbus faces a mutiny on his ship.
Natives are portrayed on the island of Guanahami
as the Spaniards arrive.
Captain Pinzon asks pardon for misjudging Columbus.
Natives react to the cross in different ways,
and muskets frighten them.
Spaniards tell Columbus that Spain wants gold.
In the third act some Spaniards are left behind,
and conflicts occur as Columbus returns to Spain.
The native Dulcan says, “With your false tales and false gods
you come to take our gold and carry off our women.”3
Fernando and Isabel welcome Columbus at Barcelona
and are happy to see six new baptized subjects.
In 1604 Lope de Vega compiled a list of 448 plays
he had written, and #395 was the tragicomedy,
The Capulets and the Montagues, which was based on
sources similar to Shakespeare’s tragedy, Romeo and Juliet.
In Lope’s play Roselo hopes to end the feud
between the two families by marrying Julia.
Witnesses agree that Roselo’s killing of Julia’s
cousin Ottavio was self-defense.
The Count of Paris tells Roselo about the sleeping potion
Julia took, and tragedy is averted.
In the end her father Antonio’s wedding to his niece Dorotea
to continue his family line is prevented when he learns
that Julia is alive and married to Roselo.
She persuades her father to respect her Montague husband.
Lope wrote his revenge tragedy, The Duchess of Malfi’s
Steward about 1605 some eight years
before John Webster wrote The Duchess of Malfi.
The story is from Mateo Bandello’s novella.
Lope’s version emphasizes the love between
the beautiful Duchess and her steward Antonio
and the jealousy of two men—
Ottavio de Medici, who also loves her, and her secretary
Urbino, who is in love with her lady-in-waiting Livia and is
jealous because he believes that Antonio is in love with Livia.
The Duchess is a widow and lets her son the Duke rule;
but the animosity comes from her brother Julio of Aragon,
who resents her marrying her steward,
and he refuses to recognize their two children.
Lope portrays a deep love between the Duchess
and Antonio, and the haughty Julio is primarily
responsible for the gruesome ending.
The tragicomedy of Peribañez and the Commander
of Ocaña may have been performed as early as 1605
when Lope de Vega was 42.
The farmer Pedro Ibañez (Peribañez) weds the beautiful
peasant Casilda, and they both love each other very much.
After the ceremony a wild bull gets loose and injures
the Commander of Ocaña who is cared for by Casilda.
The noble Commander Don Fadrique is immediately
smitten by her and contrives to have her.
He sends the couple two mules and to decorate
their house his tapestries which Pedro has requested.
The newly weds go to Toledo for a festival,
and Fadrique hires an artist to paint
a portrait of Casilda without her knowing.
The gentleman Leonardo, who serves Fadrique,
courts Casilda’s cousin Inez, and his servant
Lujan gets hired by Pedro for the harvest.
The guild appoints Pedro to have their statue of
San Roque repaired, and he takes it to the artist in Toledo.
The Commander visits Casilda at night,
and she turns him away.
Pedro sees the portrait of his wife in Toledo
commissioned by the Commander.
In 1406 Fadrique gets a letter from King Enrique III that
soldiers are needed, and he appoints Pedro a captain.
Pedro has the tapestries taken down.
The Commander makes Pedro a knight
and buckles on his sword.
Pedro leads a hundred peasant soldiers; but he uses
a horse to return home at night when Fadrique
hopes to seduce Casilda with the aid of musicians.
Pedro slays him with the sword and rides off with his wife.
The King offers a reward of 1,000 ducats to catch the killer;
but Pedro and Casilda explain what happened,
and the King pardons him and gives her the reward.
The virtuous love of the peasants has overcome the privilege
and arrogance of a noble with the help of Enrique the Just.
Lope de Vega became an officer of the Inquisition in 1608
and probably wrote The Innocent Child of La Guardia
before 1610 when the Moriscos were expelled from Spain.
The tragedy dramatizes the legend of the holy child of
La Guardia which was the explanation for the historical
accounts based on transcriptions of the trial and execution
of several Jews by the Inquisition in 1490.
In Lope’s play Queen Isabel announces the expulsion of the
Jews which occurred in 1492, and this provides a motivation
of revenge for the Jews, though the Spanish Inquisition
had been established in 1478.
The only English translation of the play was not performed
but was read publicly in 1998 after musicians refused to
participate in London because of concerns
about anti-Semitism, sadism, and pedophilia.
In the first act Isabel orders the Jews expelled,
and Jews learn that 200 families have already embarked
for exile after selling their land cheaply.
They plan revenge, and a rabbi purchases a Christian
boy from Bernardo for 1,500 ducats so that
his other nine children can be supported.
Bernardo and his wife Rosela arrange to buy
the heart of a pig and pretend that a child is dead.
The Jews discover the charade,
and Benito Garcia kidnaps the Christian child Juanico.
His mother Juana prays for her lost child.
Juanico is turned over to the Jew Francisco who scourges
the child in imitation of the passion of Jesus which the Jews
re-enact as a play that blends the distinction between
a play and the supposed reality within a play.
Isabel has convoked the Inquisition Tribunal for an auto da fé.
Juanico pleads for pity, exposing the cruelty
of corporal punishment as Francisco says,
“The rod is never used in vain when a child is being unruly.”4
In the third act Benito plays the role of Judas in betraying
the Christ child who is judged and then crucified offstage.
Finally angels appear and take Juanico to heaven,
a legend developed by Christians
because no child’s body was ever found.
The play clearly exposes the evil of anti-Semitism in Spain
which could have been Lope’s purpose.
Lope de Vega’s Lo fingido verdadero, literally
The Feigned Truth, has been translated as
Acting Is Believing and was probably performed in 1608.
In the first act Roman Emperor Aurelius Carus is killed by
lightning and is succeeded by his sons Carinus and Numerianus,
whom Aper soon finds dead in a closed carriage.
Senate Consul Laelius blames Carinus
for raping his wife and kills him.
The soldier Diocletian slays Aper and claims the crown.
In the second act Emperor Diocletian appoints
Maximian Caesar and asks the writer, director, and actor
Genesius to put on a play about love.
Genesius writes the play, hoping to win the love of Marcella
who favors Octavius; but the actors alter the lines
to suit their desires, and Marcella runs off with Octavius.
Genesius asks Diocletian to arrest Octavius,
and the Emperor accuses him of
tricking him into entering the play.
In act three Diocletian marries Camilla who gave him bread
on credit when he was only a soldier.
Rutilius describes the beasts they have acquired for the circus,
and Camilla says there is one that is
greater and more cruel called “Love.”
Diocletian asks to see the play
Genesius has written about a Christian.
Genesius accepts Marcella and Octavius back into his company.
Genesius hears a voice telling him he will be saved for playing
the role of the Christian, and once again he changes the play.
He calls the emperors tyrants,
and Diocletian sentences him to death.
This brilliant tragicomedy blurs the distinction between reality
and drama as the actors mix up the plays with their own lives
while those watching comment and are drawn into them.
Lope de Vega’s The Best Boy in Spain
(El mejor mozo de España) was performed in 1610.
This historical drama takes place in 1468 and begins with
Princess Isabel spinning cloth and talking with her
lady-in-waiting Doña Juana about the destiny of Spain.
In a vision Spain tells her that
she will expel the Muslims and Jews.
She learns that her younger brother Alfonso has died.
Don Gutierre de Cardenas, the Marquis of Villena, and
the Duke of Najera are looking to find a husband for her.
She wants her much older brother, King Enrique IV of Castile,
to declare her his heir, and he demands
that she not marry without his permission.
Isabel agrees as long as he does not deceive her
or fall back into his evil ways.
She needs money,
and the King promises to get her debts released.
Prince Fernando of Aragon also intends to expel
Jews and Moors from Spain.
During civil strife Isabel asks noble men to protect her.
In the second act she rejects the Duke of Segorbe
and the French ambassador representing
King Louis XI’s brother Prince Guianne.
In Act 3 Pedro de Giron, grandmaster of Calatrava,
defies the will of Heaven and dies.
Isabel and Fernando manage to meet disguised
as peasants and are attracted to each other.
They quickly fall in love, and he is chosen
as the “best boy in Spain” to be her husband.
This drama also credits Felipe III with the final expulsion
of the Moriscos, reflecting the racial
and religious bigotry that infected the Spanish empire.
Fuente Ovejuna by Lope de Vega was probably written
between 1612 and 1614 and is set in 1476.
Fuente Ovejuna is a village near Cordoba governed by the
Grand Commander Fernan Gomez under the
Master of Calatrava, Rodrigo Tellez Giron.
The peasants Laurencia and Pascuala know how men treat
women and do not trust them.
Frondoso and Laurencia satirize the hypocrisy of many.
Mengo believes people love themselves.
The Commander’s servant Flores tells how the Master
punished a town by beheading people.
Queen Isabel and King Fernando are fighting against the claim
of Portugal’s Alfonso who married Juana Beltraneja.
When the Commander is molesting Laurencia,
Frondoso picks up his crossbow, enabling her to run away.
Jacinta considers her peasant father more noble
than the Commander who has her arrested.
Frondoso asks Laurencia to marry him, and she accepts.
Her father Esteban is a magistrate
and learns that Mengo was flogged.
At the wedding the Commander and his men take away
Esteban’s rod of office and arrest Laurencia and Frondoso.
Esteban and the aldermen organize a meeting to remove
the criminal Commander who is
dishonoring so many in their town.
Laurencia arrives disheveled, having fought for her honor.
She urges the men to act and then enlists the women too.
The villagers of Fuente Ovejuna favor
Fernando and Isabel and shout,
“Death to all false Christians and foul traitors!”4
They kill the Commander, and his wounded servant Flores
reports this to King Fernando, who sends a judge to investigate.
The people all agree to say only “Fuente Ovejuna”
when tortured and interrogated.
Even the weak Mengo answers the Judge so.
The Master of Calatrava complains to Fernando and Isabel,
and the Judge reports that he tortured 300 people.
Esteban explains about the tyranny and cruelty of the
Commander, and the King pardons them all.
This revolutionary drama supports the Catholic monarchs
Fernando and Isabel while affirming
the right of the people to overthrow a tyrant.
Lope de Vega’s The King’s Peace Treatie
and the Jewess of Toledo was written about 1612
and takes place during the Crusades.
King Alfonso VIII (1155-1214) is shown at the age of ten
intent on ruling and becoming a knight
as his men are claiming Toledo for him.
Lope de Arenas is true to the will of the late king and will not
surrender his castle; but his friend Dominguillo betrays him
for a reward from Alfonso
who adds the punishment of blinding him.
The young King rewards the man who volunteered to be
wounded by Dominguillo by giving him Lope’s castle.
After many years have passed, King Alfonso has married
Leonor but soon after that falls in love
with the beautiful Jewess Rachel.
In the third act Queen Leonor is upset that for seven years
Alfonso has been ignoring her and his royal duties
because of Rachel, and the Queen urges Beltran, Blasco,
Garceran, and Illan to kill Rachel for the good of the kingdom.
She is killed, and Alfonso plots revenge;
but an angel persuades him to reconcile with Queen Leonor.
She goes to pray at the hospital and sanctuary dedicated
to the Virgin by St. Ildefonsus in Toledo,
and Alfonso arrives and prays there too.
They overhear each other and then are reunited
in love and make peace in their marriage.
Lope wrote the comedy, Lady Nitwit (La dama boba), in 1613.
The gentleman Liseo with his servant Turin wants to wed the
beautiful but ignorant Finea because her father Octavio is
offering a dowry of 40,000 ducats while Laurencio, Duardo
and Feniso are courting her beautiful
and well educated sister, Nise,
whose dowry is only 10,000 ducats.
During the play Finea learns from love,
and Laurencio decides he would rather marry her
while Liseo changes his mind too and wants Nise.
Laurencio promises before witnesses to marry Finea
and hides with her in the attic while she tells her father
that Laurencio went to Toledo and that she can be
a nitwit when she wants to be.
The respective servants also fall in love,
and the play ends with four couples planning to marry.
Lope de Vega wrote the romantic comedy,
The Dog in the Manger about 1614.
The title comes from a popular metaphor found in the early
2nd century CE in the Gospel of Thomas 102:
Jesus said, “Woe to the Pharisees,
for they are like a dog sleeping
in the manger of the oxen;
neither does he eat
nor does he let the oxen eat.”6
Diana, Countess of Belflor, does not realize that she is in love
with her secretary Teodoro until she finds out that
he loves her maid Marcela.
Diana declares her love for Teodoro,
and he is glad and rejects Marcela.
The Marquis Ricardo and Count Federico
are courting Diana and become jealous.
To make Teodora jealous Diana says she will marry Ricardo.
She suggests that Marcela marry her squire Fabio.
Teodoro vacillates between Marcela and Diana.
Teodoro’s servant Tristan provides comic relief as the
gracioso and tells Ricardo and Federico he will kill Teodoro
and gets money from them but warns his master.
Finally Count Ludovico learns that Teodoro is his long-lost son,
making him a noble and more suitable for Diana.
Lope shows how jealousy can reveal love
even kept secret from oneself.
As usual love conquers all, and the deus ex machina ending
does not take away from the point that Diana loves her
secretary even though he is not a noble
and would have married him anyway.
Thus for Lope love is more important than social class.
In 1620 Madness in Valencia was published in Volume 13
of Lope’s comedias, showing the insanity of romantic love
in the context of its famous mental hospital
which endeavored to cure the people it housed.
Lope’s tragicomedy The Knight of Olmedo was performed
about 1620 and was published in 1625.
The story takes place while King Juan II
was ruling Castile 1419-54.
Don Alonso is in love with Doña Inés and hires the bawdy
sorceress Fabia to take his letter to her.
Don Rodrigo is also in love with Inés, but she dislikes him.
She does like Alonso’s letter and sends him a reply.
However, the ribbon she leaves for him is taken and divided
by Rodrigo and his friend Fernando,
who wants to marry her sister Doña Leonor.
Their father Pedro considers Rodrigo and Fernando
as prospective husbands for his daughters.
Alonso meets with Inés, and they want to marry.
When Pedro advises Inés to marry Rodrigo, she replies that
she is already married because she intends to become a nun.
She will study Latin, and Alonso’s servant Tello pretend
to be her tutor, bringing letters from Alonso.
Rodrigo is very jealous of Alonso and wants to kill him.
King Juan II intends to appoint Alonso as Knight Commander.
Alonso has a nightmare in which a hawk kills a goldfinch.
Alonso excels in the bullfights and saves the life of Rodrigo,
whose mind is poisoned by jealousy, envy, and humiliation.
Alonso wants to return to Olmedo to see his father,
and on the way he is attacked and mortally wounded by
Rodrigo, Fernando, and other men who use guns.
Tello finds Alonso and learns who murdered him.
Leonor tells her father that Inés will not wed Rodrigo
because she wants to marry Alonso, and Pedro is delighted.
The King honors Pedro. Rodrigo and Fernando
want to marry his daughters, but Tello arrives
and tells how they murdered Alonso.
The King has them arrested and orders their execution.
Inés decides to enter a convent after all.
Lope de Vega wrote The Greatest Alcalde the King
in the early 1620s.
An alcalde is a local judge and administrator.
Sancho and Elvira are in love, and he gets permission
to marry her from her father, the farmer Nuño,
and his employer, Don Tello de Neira.
Before the wedding at Nuño’s home, Don Tello is smitten
by Elvira’s beauty and prevents the priest from entering.
Then with his men he abducts Elvira and takes her to his castle.
His sister Feliciana persuades him not to ravish her,
and Elvira fights for her honor; but Don Tello keeps Elvira
as a prisoner, hoping she will give in
and claiming she is not Sancho’s wife.
Sancho and talkative Pelayo travel to appeal to Alfonso VII
(r. 1126-57), King of Leon and Castile,
who writes a letter for them to give to Don Tello.
The letter orders him to release the peasant girl,
but Don Tello refuses to do so.
Sancho and Pelayo return to the King who sets off with
Count Don Pedro and Don Enrique to remedy the situation.
Alfonso summons Elvira and a headsman and orders
Don Tello to marry Elvira before he is beheaded,
and half his lands and wealth are to be a dowry for Elvira;
Feliciana is to be at his court until she finds a worthy husband.
This drama shows how a wise king can over-rule
an oppressive noble to bring about justice.
In Lope’s comedy A Certainty for a Doubt King Pedro
(r. 1350-66) wants to marry Doña Juana; but his brother,
Count Enrique, loves her, and she loves him.
The King banishes Enrique from his court at Seville.
Her lady-in-waiting Doña Ines advises Juana to marry
the King because she is in love with Enrique too.
Enrique returns to Seville because of his love for Juana,
and Teodora welcomes him into her house.
Ines admits to Juana that she loves Enrique.
He writes a letter to Juana; but his servant Ramiro gives it
to Ines, who reads it to show the King
that Enrique loves her, not Juana.
The King summons Enrique and gives the hand of Ines to him.
Juana tells the King that only she is worthy to marry Enrique.
The King refuses to let her marry Enrique
because of his jealous love for her.
Enrique explains to the King that his letter
was written to Juana, not Ines.
The two men quarrel, and the King calls
his brother a traitor; but Enrique refuses to fight him.
In the third act Teodora tells Juana that Enrique loves her,
but Juana says the Count is courting her cousin.
Teodora admits she loves Enrique too.
He tells Juana that he wrote to her,
and he suspects she wants to marry the King.
Juana says she will inform the King
and promises to marry Enrique.
He still doubts her, and she says she will forget the Count;
but if she can remove his suspicions, she will be his wife.
She chooses love over glory.
The King has prepared for his wedding to Juana,
but she tells Enrique that she would rather
die than marry the King.
Enrique decides to leave Seville again.
The King expects the Adelantado to present Juana as his bride;
but Juana says she will forgo the certainty of marrying the King
for the doubtful hope of having Enrique.
When the King hears this, he orders Enrique to be killed.
Juana wants to warn him and learns he has returned.
Finally the Adelantado comes in with Enrique and Juana
who have been married by the Archbishop,
and the King wishes the couple a happy life.
Lope de Vega’s tragedy Punishment Without Revenge was
written in 1631 and had only one performance in May 1632
as the womanizing Duke may have been
embarrassing to King Felipe IV.
The original incident occurred at Ferrara in May 1425,
and the story comes from a novella by Matteo Bandello.
The Duke of Ferrara is known for his many affairs,
and his only son is the illegitimate and grown-up
Count Federico who is sent to escort
the Duke’s bride Casandra.
Mutual attraction occurs at first sight
before he knows who she is.
The Duke notes that a play is a mirror whereby all kinds
of people “can by example learn of honor and of life.”
Yet most people ignore the truth about themselves.
Aurora is the daughter of the Duke’s brother and wants
to marry her cousin Federico,
and the Marquis of Gonzaga is courting her.
In Act 2 Casandra complains to a servant that
her new husband treats her badly,
and the Duke tells Federico he regrets marrying her.
Casandra asks Federico if he is jealous because of the
Marquis and no longer wants to marry Aurora,
or is he jealous because she married the Duke?
She complains the Duke seeks immoral women
and is tyrannical to her.
She urges Federico to confess whom he loves.
Aurora tries to awaken his jealousy
and love by pretending to love the Marquis.
The Duke is summoned by the Pope to fight
or the Papal States and leaves.
Federico tells Casandra that he loves her.
In Act 3 Aurora tells the Marquis that Federico
and Casandra are having an affair.
The Duke is about to return, and Federico tells Casandra
that he will marry Aurora; but Casandra warns that,
if he does, she will announce their guilt.
The servant Ricardo says that the Duke has changed and is
now dedicated to Casandra and his son; but when the
Duke gets a letter about their affair, he feels dishonored
and vows to punish them without taking revenge.
The Duke wants Federico and Aurora to marry;
but she refuses, and Casandra warns him
that love must be free and not forced.
Federico advises Casandra that
they must protect her reputation.
The Duke tells Aurora that Casandra wants her
to marry the Marquis, and Aurora is glad.
The Duke has Casandra tied up with her face
covered and sends his son to kill a traitor.
Federico kills her with his sword
and then discovers who she is.
The Duke orders the Marquis to kill Federico, and he obeys.
The Duke believes they have been punished without
his exacting personal revenge, though he ordered both murders.
This tragedy about honor shows that the affair,
though not genetically incestuous, is a betrayal of the
social relationships while marrying a cousin
was considered socially acceptable.
Lope depicted how powerful love can be,
in this case with tragic results.
Lope de Vega also wrote dozens of biographical three-act
plays about saints that often include miracles,
visions, angels, and the devil.
Some of the saints dramatized in the order they were written
from 1594 to 1629 are James (Santiago), Teresa of Avila
(d. 1582), Basil (d. 379), Dominic Guzman (d. 1221),
Isidore (d. 1170), Juan de Dios (d. 1550), Jerome (d. 420),
Augustine (d. 430), Barlaam and Ioasaph,
Francesco of Assisi (d. 1226).
Nicholas of Tolentino (d. 1305), Ildephonsus (d. 667),
Brigid (d. 1373), and Peter Nolasco (d. 1258).
Gabriel Josepe Téllez was born on March 24, 1579
and was educated in Madrid.
He joined a convent in January 1600.
He was a vicar of the Soria convent
and was ordained a priest in 1608.
He had already started writing plays about the lives of saints,
and after moving to Toledo in 1611
he used the pen name, Tirso de Molina.
In April 1616 he went to Santo Domingo where
he was appointed Definidor General and represented
the province on the governing committee
or the Order of Mercy.
He attended a meeting at Guadalajara in June 1618.
He resigned in 1620 and became a master of theology
and lived in Madrid near his friend
Fray Gaspar Prieto, head of the Order.
He wrote plays considered profane and was banished
on March 6, 1625 to a remote monastery.
The next year he became Commander
of the Trujillo convent for three years.
He published the first edition of his plays in 1627.
He moved to Salamanca in 1629
and became historian of the Order of Mercy.
In 1632 he was appointed Definidor of Castile,
serving in Madrid until 1636.
He was involved in the movement against the
Prime Minister Olivares, and in October 1640
the Junta de Reformaciones exiled Tirso to Cuenca.
His History of the Order of Mercy was completed
in 1639 but was not published until 1973.
In 1645 he was appointed Comendador of the
convent of Soria, and he died on March 12, 1648.
Tirso de Molina was inspired by the successful plays of
Lope de Vega and agreed with his new ideas on theater.
When Lope published Lo fingido verdadero
(Acting Is Believing) in 1624, he dedicated it to Tirso,
praising him for being arte y natural.
Tirso published prose, plays,
and poetry in To Teach and Delight.
In 1634 he claimed that he had written 300 plays,
but only 55 remain.
Tirso de Molina’s first play, The Bashful Man at Court,
was probably written about 1606
but was not published until 1621.
This romantic comedy has sexual innuendo
and cross-dressing by sex and social class.
The Duke of Alvero’s secretary has been murdered,
and the Duke learns that the Count of Estremoz
was framed by a forged letter.
Ruy Lorenzo hired the assassin
and hides in the forest as a peasant.
Mireno exchanges clothes with him because
he wants to look like a noble
and calls himself Don Dionis of Portugal.
The Duke agrees to let the Count marry his daughter Serafina,
but Don Antonio falls in love with her.
The Duke’s daughter Magdalena and Mireno
are attracted to each other, but he is bashful.
Antonio becomes the Duke’s secretary, and Mireno tutors
Magdalena who has been promised
to the absent Count Vasconcelos.
Mireno is jealous and inhibited; but Magdalena draws him
out by expressing her feelings
while pretending to talk in her sleep.
Serafina dresses as a man,
and Antonio’s cousin Juana is attracted to her.
The Portuguese Duke Pedro of Coimbra
is disguised as the peasant Lauro.
Finally at the court of the Duke everyone’s identity
is made clear, and the two happy couples are to marry.
Tirso’s Dom Gil of the Breeches Green, performed in 1615,
is another comedy with disguises and false identities.
Doña Juana tells her servant Quintana that Don Martin
promised to marry her; but his father wants him to wed
Doña Inés, who has 70,000 ducats in Madrid, and to use
the name Don Gil in case Juana sends officers after him.
Juana has already dressed in green pants
so that she can pretend to be Don Gil first.
Don Juan is courting Inés, but she falls in love with Juana’s
Don Gil and rejects Martin’s Don Gil de Albornez.
Juana leases the house next door to Inés
who urges Juan to kill Don Gil de Albornez.
Juana learns that Martin is going to pretend to be Don Miguel,
and she dresses as the woman Elvira and tells Inés
that she is in love with Miguel
who betrayed her and is claiming he is Gil.
Quintana tells Martin that Juana entered a convent
and is pregnant and later that she died in childbirth.
Martin fears she is haunting him.
Pedro is the father of Inés and gives
her hand to Juana (Don Gil)
who has also attracted the love of Inés’s cousin Clara.
Martin wears green pants, and Juan tries to fight him.
Clara also dresses as a man to be Don Gil,
and Juan threatens to kill her.
Juan pretends to be Don Gil, making four of them.
Finally Quintana arrives with Juana’s father Don Diego
and a law officer who arrests Martin for killing his wife.
Juana appears as a man and explains,
and Martin accepts her love.
They are to be married after each has played three roles.
This complicated plot is farcical but shows the skill
and determination of Juana to win back her fiancé.
Tirso de Molina’s most famous play is The Trickster of Seville
which was written about 1615 and began the legend
of the ruthless lover Don Juan.
At Naples in the dark Don Juan Tenorio, disguised as
Duke Octavio, makes love with the Duchess Isabel.
He is caught by his Uncle Pedro who covers over his crime
to the King of Naples, causing Octavio to be blamed.
Don Juan escapes and is found on a seashore by the
fisherwoman Thisbe, whom he seduces
by promising to marry her.
The King of Castile in Seville and Don Juan’s father
Don Diego arrange a marriage between Don Juan
and Don Gonzalo’s daughter Ana.
Don Juan is often warned that
he will be punished for his crimes
after his death, but he considers that credit for a long time.
Diego tells the King that it was his son who seduced
the Duchess, and the King cancels the wedding
and exiles Don Juan to Lebrija as its count.
Don Juan arranges for the lusty Marquis de la Mota
to visit Ana at night so that he can impersonate
the Marquis and have his way with her.
Gonzalo comes in with a sword,
and Don Juan kills him; but the Marquis is arrested.
Diego advises his son to behave better and says goodbye.
At a wedding among peasants Don Juan manages
to replace the bridegroom Batricio so that he can sleep
with the bride Aminta and annul her marriage.
The King pardons the Marquis who is to marry Ana.
Octavio wants a duel with Don Juan
and helps Aminta to tell her story.
Don Juan takes refuge in a church in Seville where
he sees a statue of Gonzalo moving toward him.
They agree to meet the next day to dine.
Isabel is to wed Don Juan, but the next day
the statue or ghost of Gonzalo kills Don Juan.
At court Batricio and Thisbe complain about Don Juan,
and his lackey tells how
he died in punishment for his crimes.
Tirso’s tragedy Tamar’s Revenge was written by 1624
and is based on 2 Samuel 13.
King David is ruling Israel, and the four princes in order of
seniority are Amnon, Absalom, Adonijah, and Solomon.
Absalom had the same mother as their sister Tamar.
In the first act Amnon tells Absolom, Eliazer, and Adonijah
why he rejects each of fourteen women.
Amnon in the dark hears Tamar talking and singing,
converses with her, and kisses her hand.
He becomes depressed, and wearing a mask he sees Tamar
in a red dress at a wedding celebration.
He kisses her hand again and says he will have his way with her.
She orders the guards to kill him, but he has left.
In act 2 Amnon goes after his fencing master with a real sword.
David returns victorious from a battle
and learns that his oldest son is sad.
Amnon wants to be left alone,
but he asks Tamar to restore his health.
He speaks of love and eventually says he wants to win her love.
She agrees to let him woo her;
but when he kisses her, she warns him.
She promises to love him and says he can visit her that night.
Joab overhears and plans to tell the King;
but Tamar says that Amnon is mad and urges Joab to marry her.
Amnon coming back sees Joab kiss her hand
and becomes jealous.
Jonadab advises Amnon to pretend he is ill and to request
that Tamar serve him.
Amnon tells David he can’t eat unless Tamar cooks for him.
She warns Amnon about incest,
but he says he wants to love her;
she calls his honor and love a whore.
In the third act Amnon tells Tamar to get out of his room,
and she castigates him for dishonoring her and insulting her.
He gets help to eject her, and she promises vengeance.
Absalom hopes to become king now; but Adonijah says
Absalom is in love with himself
and sells his beautiful hair to women.
Disheveled and mourning, Tamar tells King David what
happened and urges him to punish Amnon as a traitor.
David summons Prince Amnon.
The King weeps, remembers how
God forgave his sins, and is merciful.
Absalom plans to kill Amnon and puts the crown on his head.
David sees him, and Absalom lies about
who he is going to kill.
He swears that if he rebels,
he can be hung up by his golden hair.
Tamar takes refuge with peasants,
and Laureta tells the future of the four princes.
Amnon is left alone with Tamar who promises revenge.
Finally Amnon is found dead on a banquet table,
and her honor is restored.
Absalom hopes to be king. David prays and learns
from Solomon that Absalom murdered Amnon.
This tragedy depicts the isolation of a royal family
and the insanity that can result when inhibitions are lost.
After being threatened in 1625 with excommunication
if he wrote any more profane plays, Tirso de Molina wrote
dramas with moral lessons and biblical plays.
In The State Upside-down he portrayed the decadence
of the Byzantine Empire during the
reign of Constantine IV (r. 652-685).
He deposed and banished his mother, provoking rebellion
and subverting justice throughout the society.
Constantine had his own brothers
mutilated so they could not rule.
The Reluctant Favorite satirized the Spanish Empire,
especially the prime minister Olivares.
The corruption of the government spreads to others.
Saint Bruno’s life is depicted in The Great Disillusion
as his romantic adventures and ambitions
are transformed by serving God.
Jealous of Herself describes how sensual passions
can be transmuted by spiritual love.
Prudence in Woman depicts how a wise Queen
can apply Christian charity toward enemies
and overcome the ambition and violence of her ministers.
Other biblical plays by Tirso include The Best Gleaner
about Ruth, The Woman Who Rules the Roost on Jezebel,
and Life and Death of Herod
who slaughtered innocent children.
These plays show how the common people can starve
and suffer because of the vices of the powerful.
A lively theological controversy for more than a century
was the attempt to understand the relationship between
God’s omnipotence and human free will
because to many they seem mutually exclusive.
Since the Reformation this issue related to whether souls
are saved by their own actions
or only by the grace of God or by both.
Tirso may have chosen the name Molina because he agreed
with the ideas of the Jesuit Luis de Molina (1535-1600)
who defended human freedom and attempted to resolve
this with God’s grace in his Concordia in 1588.
Tirso de Molina’s The Doubter Damned
(El condenado por desconfiado) is a later play (1635).
Paulo has been a religious hermit for ten years
with his helper Pedrisco.
Paulo has a dream that he offended God; because his sins
outweigh his goodness, he is to be condemned.
The Devil comes and warns him to consider Anareto’s son
Enrico who calls himself a devil and uses his sword
on men so that he can win Celia.
Paulo comes with Pedrisco to find Enrico
because an angel told him that he and Enrico
will either be damned or saved together.
Enrico tells how he began stealing from his father,
became a gambler, a thief, and a murderer.
He has raped six maidens,
stripped church altars, and despises the law.
Paulo is worried that both will go to hell and decides
to become a bandit leader like Enrico.
Yet Enrico is kind to his father Anareto and says
if he were always with him, he would commit no crimes.
Later Octavio demands his money back,
and Enrico stabs him.
The Governor orders Enrico executed but is killed by him.
Paulo orders Pedrisco to hang three men,
but a shepherd boy tells Paulo
that God is merciful to sinners.
Paulo wonders if Enrico will find forgiveness too.
Pedrisco comes across Enrico unarmed
and has him tied up but not harmed.
Paulo returns as a hermit and asks
Enrico to confess because he is to die.
Enrico refuses, and Paulo has him untied
and tells him his story.
Enrico says he trusts in the great love of God.
He offers Paulo a gem in Naples
and goes with Pedrisco to get it.
In act 3 Enrico and Pedrisco are in jail.
Celia visits them and says they are to be hanged.
Enrico breaks his chain and kills a guard but is recaptured.
The Devil urges Enrico to escape,
but musicians sing for him to stay.
Enrico trusts in God’s mercy and hopes to be saved.
Anareto visits his son Enrico and grieves for him.
Paulo dreams about a shepherd boy
who warns him he is clinging to evil.
Paulo wakes up and sees two angels
bearing the soul of Enrico to heaven.
Armed peasants and a judge come for Paulo,
but he drives them away with his sword,
runs down a mountain, and is badly wounded.
Pedrisco arrives and says they found him
innocent of Enrico’s crimes.
He and Paulo embrace, and Pedrisco tells how Enrico
confessed and died a Christian death and is now with God;
but Paulo is in hell for doubting.
Paulo realizes that he brought this on himself
and is cursed because of his lack of faith.
The judge lets Pedrisco go so that he can learn from this,
and Pedrisco advises others to learn from Robert Bellarmine
who became a cardinal in 1599 and died in 1621.
Juan Ruiz Alarcon was born about 1582 in Mexico City.
He studied law and came to Spain in 1600, earning his
bachelor degree in civil law at Salamanca University in 1602
and getting his licentiate in civil and canon law in 1605.
He went back to Mexico in 1609
but settled in Madrid in 1614.
He published eight plays in 1628 and twelve in 1634.
In June 1633 he was appointed Permanent Court Reporter
for the Royal Council of the Indies.
He died on August 4, 1639.
Alarcon’s comedy The Walls Have Ears
(Las paredes oyen) was performed in 1617.
Don Juan de Mendoza tells his servant Beltran that the rich
and beautiful widow Doña Ana is far superior in every way
to himself, but he has hope for his love.
He sees her alone and tells her he loves her even though
he does not expect her to love him back.
He asks if it is a sin to love her more than he loves himself.
Don Mendo de Guzman tells the Count that he loves Ana
and that Lucrecia is jealous.
Dorothea wants to marry him, but he loves Ana most.
Mendo feels lovable because he is a Leo,
and the love of Venus and the desire of Mars
are intensified by a conjunction at his birth.
Ana tells Mendo that she feels a longing,
but her heart is cautious.
The Count tells Lucrecia that he is in love with her.
Mendo is afraid that Duke Urbino will fall in love with Ana,
and so he tells him that she is ugly and old.
Ana overhears this and leaves town.
In act 2 Juan learns Ana has changed,
and he believes she may respond to his love.
Lucrecia has a love letter from Mendo that praises her
and denigrates Ana, and she shows it to Ana.
This lady no longer has love for Mendo.
Her servant Celia says Juan’s love for her is selfless,
and she suggests that the heart and mind
are more important than face and figure.
The Duke tells Ana he is smitten by her.
Mendo tries to win Ana back,
but she says he is his own enemy.
Mendo stops Ana on a highway.
He grabs her, and Lucrecia tries to help Ana.
The Duke and Juan arrive and draw their swords
against Mendo and his servant, and they fight.
In act 3 the Duke says Mendo intended violence.
Juan declares his love for Ana, and she says it is madness.
He offers to help her gain the love of the Duke;
but she says he is beyond her and that
she would rather marry a farmer.
Celia urges Ana to declare her love for Juan.
Mendo tells the Count he will go back to Lucretia.
Beltran urges Juan to marry Ana.
The Count shows Lucrecia a love letter from Mendo to Ana,
and Lucrecia shares it with Ana and Juan.
Mendo tries again to win back Ana, but she rejects him.
Mendo, Juan, the Duke, and the Count all draw their swords,
but Ana prevents a fight and gives her hand to Juan.
Lucretia tells Mendo that the walls have ears,
and they heard him speak ill of her;
she gives her hand to the Count.
This comedy shows how a selfless and more spiritual love
is greater than a selfish attachment based on physical attraction.
Alarcon’s best known comedy The Truth Suspected
(La verdad sospechosa) was published in 1634.
Don Beltran gives his servant Tristan to his son Garcia
who has just come home to Madrid.
An elderly lawyer warns Beltran that Garcia has a habit
of saying things that are not true, but it is just a phase.
Beltran wants his son married before people find out.
Garcia asks Tristan about the women there.
Garcia tells wealthy Don Juan de Luna and his friend Felix about
a fabulous banquet he attended which Tristan knows is false.
Garcia also claims he is from Peru.
Juan is courting Jacinta and suspects
she spent the night with a man.
Garcia heard that Lucrecia is prettier
than Jacinta and desires her.
Beltran advises his son to say no more than necessary,
but Tristan tells Beltran that Garcia is telling many lies.
Jacinta learns that Garcia is the son of Beltran
and not from America.
Beltran warns his son to act like a gentleman,
and he wants him to marry Jacinta.
Garcia thinks he wants her friend Lucrecia and tells his father
he is already married to a woman in Salamanca and is believed.
Garcia challenges jealous Juan,
and they fight until Felix stops them
and explains to Juan that Garcia lies.
Jacinta and her friend Lucrecia pretend to be each other
to fool Garcia who courts Jacinta thinking she is Lucrecia,
who hopes that Garcia will stop lying and love her truly.
Garcia forgets some of his lying, and Tristan notes that
a liar needs as good a memory as an imagination.
Garcia sends a love letter to Lucrecia.
Garcia tells Tristan that he killed Juan, but the servant sees
Juan approaching and realizes Garcia even lies to him.
They explain to Beltran that Garcia lied
about being married to avoid marrying Jacinta.
Finally Juan is to marry Jacinta, and Garcia realizes
he has been tricked but will have to marry Lucrecia
as he promised.
This comedy shows the craziness that
can result from a pathological liar who loses all trust.
Pedro Calderon de la Barca was born
on January 17, 1600 in Madrid.
His Flemish mother died in 1610, and his father was Secretary
of the Council of the Treasury until his death in 1615.
He had been a harsh disciplinarian and in his will ordered
Pedro to leave a certain woman alone.
That year Pedro left the University of Alcala and went to
Salamanca where he earned a degree in canon law.
He returned to Madrid in 1618,
and by 1620 he was entering poetry contests.
In 1621 his brothers Diego and José and he were involved
in a murder and had to pay compensation to the victim’s family.
In 1622 he won third prize for poetry and was praised
by Lope de Vega, and his plays were first performed in 1623.
Starting in 1625 Pedro Calderon did military service
in Italy and Flanders for three years.
In 1629 the actor Pedro de Villegas wounded his brother
Diego in a duel and fled into a Trinitarian convent where
Pedro Calderon molested the nuns including
Lope de Vega’s daughter Marcela.
He was put under house arrest for a few days.
Calderon’s comedy The Fake Astrologer
was written about 1624.
Doña Maria tells her maid Beatriz she loves Don Juan,
but she dislikes Don Diego.
Don Juan de Medrano tells her he is going to Flanders
to serve King Felipe IV.
Maria confesses she loves him, and he promises his devotion.
She asks him not to tell anyone or let himself be seen there.
Diego has his servant Moron give a gold chain to Beatriz
for her help in courting Maria. Don Juan secretly remains
in Madrid and is aided by Don Carlos who loves Violante.
Beatriz tells Moron that Maria adores Juan,
and Moron tells Diego that the lovers meet secretly.
Don Antonio assures Diego he will keep the secret,
but he tells Carlos who tells Violante.
In act 2 Maria talks with Moron and Diego and blames
Beatriz for revealing her secret.
Moron claims that Diego is a famous astrologer.
Diego tells Leonardo that his daughter
Maria will marry a poor man.
Leonardo wants to learn about the future from him.
Antonio learns of this and tells Carlos
that Diego has fantastic abilities.
Carlos takes a letter to Violante who wants to see Don Juan,
and Carlos says Diego can help her see him.
Diego goes to Violante and realizes he cannot do magic,
but he has her write a letter to Juan and expect him that night.
Carlos finds the letter.
Don Juan visits Violante and her servant Quiteria,
and they both are scared and run away.
In act 3 Maria gives Juan a jewel and then
tells her father her jewel is gone.
Diego is asked to find the jewel,
but he says he is not a sorcerer.
Diego tells Violante that Juan secretly loves her.
Leonardo asks Diego to find the jewel.
Diego says he does not know astrology, and Leonardo
thinks he is being humble.
Juan tells Leonardo that Maria gave him the jewel.
Violante confesses her love for Juan.
Violante pretends to love Carlos in order to make Juan jealous.
Maria agrees to marry Juan.
Violante tells Leonardo that Juan loves his daughter.
Diego says the stars decreed her husband would be poor,
and Leonardo gives her hand to Juan.
Diego promises to stop prophesying and to quit astrology.
This farce shows how people can be fooled by something
(astrology) they do not understand.
Calderon probably wrote Devotion to the Cross initially
when he was a soldier in Italy in 1625
and later revised it for performance in 1633.
Near Siena two young men are quarreling.
Lisardo objects to Eusebio marrying his sister Julia
because she is entering a convent.
Eusebio tells how the cross has been present at his birth
and several times at key moments in his life.
They fight, and Lisardo is mortally wounded.
At Curcio’s house his daughter Julia does not want to forget
Eusebio and become a nun as her father insists.
Eusebio arrives and asksher to run away with him.
Julia says Curcio dominates her life
but not her freedom of conscience.
Her maid Arminda comes in
and says her brother Lisardo is dead.
Julia forgives Eusebio and urges him to escape.
He says he will always love her and leaves.
In act 2 Eusebio has become a leader of bandits.
Their prisoner Alberto is a holy hermit with the book,
The Miracles of the Cross.
Eusebio sends a message to Curcio and breaks
into the convent and demands that Julia submit to him.
He sees that she also has a cross on her breast
and promises to pray with her.
Julia escapes from the convent, dresses as a man,
and is captured by highwaymen who take her to Eusebio.
She tells him she killed several people,
but he advises her to return to the convent.
Eusebio fights Curcio and begs him to forgive him.
They stop fighting.
Eusebio refuses to surrender to the law
and is attacked by peasants and falls off a cliff.
Curcio sees the cross on his chest and realizes he is his son.
Eusebio seems to have died
but revives and confesses to Alberto.
Curcio sees Eusebio die. Julia admits her crimes.
Curcio is about to kill her when she embraces
a cross and is taken up to heaven.
This early drama reflects Spain’s violence,
religion, and code of honor.
Calderon wrote The Purgatory of Saint Patrick in 1628.
King Egerius of Ireland and his daughters Polonia
and Lesbia find Patrick and Luis Enius on the seashore.
Patrick is an orphan from an Irish cavalier and a French lady
who became a Christian and read lives of the saints.
Luis is a Spaniard who has murdered several people
and was captured by Captain Philip.
The King embraces Luis for his courage
and makes Patrick a slave.
Patrick prays, and an angel frees him.
Luis quarrels with Philip and is arrested.
Polonia helps Luis escape, but then he murders her.
Philip finds her body, and in the presence of the King
by prayer Patrick brings Polonia back to life.
The King asks if she was in heaven or hell,
and Patrick explains that she was temporarily in purgatory.
The King asks him to show them purgatory.
Patrick takes them to a cave and says that
those confessing sins will be forgiven.
Luis travels with Paul and sees his own spirit.
By a mountain Luis finds Polonia,
and he asks her to guide him.
At Patrick’s cave Luis is counseled by a canon
and taken into the cave.
Luis emerges astonished and tells Polonia and others how
he was advised by angels and came out
unmolested by the infernal spirits.
This religious drama shows how faith in God
can overcome and transform the life of a violent Spaniard.
Calderon’s romantic comedy,
The Phantom Lady, is from 1629.
Don Manuel is traveling with his comical servant Cosme
to visit his friend Don Juan
whose sister Doña Angela is a widow.
She is veiled and with her servant Isabel and asks Manuel
or protection from her other brother Don Luis,
who, not recognizing her, is attracted to her.
Cosme asks Luis for help reading an address,
but Luis beats him.
Manuel challenges Luis, and they fight.
Don Juan arrives with Doña Beatriz and wants to help Luis,
who stops the fight that would become unfair.
Juan takes Manuel to his house.
Angela is staying at Juan’s house,
and a secret door covered by a mirror connects her room
to the guest room where Manuel stays.
She has Isabel place letters in his room and becomes
the phantom lady who Cosme thinks is a devil.
This contrivance makes for many
intriguing and amusing situations.
While Angela writes a letter, Isabel steals money
from Manuel and throws his clothes around.
Manuel answers the letters and suspects the lady is
the mistress of Luis, who loves Beatriz;
but she rejects him and is coy with Juan.
Manuel nearly catches Isabel and Angela, but they escape.
In act 3 Angela leads Manuel to her room,
but she puts off identifying herself.
Luis is looking for Beatriz and gets into a fight with Manuel.
Finally Angela explains everything.
Luis says Manuel can not take Angela away
without marrying her, and he agrees.
Despite some sword play no one is seriously hurt,
and conflicts are resolved honorably.
Calderon’s most famous play, Life Is a Dream
(La vida es sueño), was written
about 1629 and published in 1635.
Poland’s King Basil, worried about bad omens,
has kept his son Segismund in a prison with only
Clotaldo as a guard and tutor.
Clotaldo’s daughter Rosaura in a man’s clothes
arrives with her servant Clarion, and she keeps
the resentful Segismund from killing her.
Clotaldo with soldiers wearing masks takes Rosaura
and Clarion away and realizes that Rosaura is his child.
King Basil tries to reconcile his nephew
Astolfo and his niece Stella.
Basil says he will let Segismund rule;
but if he does so badly, he will be imprisoned again.
Then the cousins Astolfo and Stella
will marry and succeed him.
Prince Segismund is drugged and returned to the palace.
Basil hopes he will think his previous suffering
was a dream or that his ruling is a dream.
Segismund quarrels with a servant and Clotaldo,
and he has the servant thrown off the balcony to his death.
Basil criticizes him and warns him he is dreaming.
Rosaura becomes a lady in waiting to Stella,
and Segismund says her resistance poisons his patience;
but Clotaldo prevents him from killing her.
Astolfo stops Segismund from killing Clotaldo,
and Segismund threatens to take vengeance;
but Basil has him arrested, drugged,
and taken back to the prison.
Rosaura discovers that Astolfo is giving her
portrait to Stella and intervenes.
Segismund insists he was awake
but that the strange world is like dreaming.
Clotaldo advises him to do good even in dreams.
In act 3 soldiers come and liberate sleeping Segismund
from prison, but Clarion is left there.
Clotaldo opposes the revolt, and Segismund lets him
serve Basil and says virtue matters.
Stella and Rosaura support Segismund.
Basil is losing and flees with Clotaldo, and Clarion is killed.
Basil comes and kneels before Segismund
who forgives him and says,
“He who foresees an evil cannot conquer it thus in advance.”7
Segismund has Astolfo marry Rosaura, and he will wed Stella.
The soldier who claimed he led the revolution is imprisoned.
Segismund says a dream taught him and notes that all human
happiness passes away like any dream.
This play dramatically shows the need to control one’s vices
and overcome circumstances with virtuous behavior.
Calderon’s Love After Death (1633) is also known
as El Tuzani de la Alpujarra and is set during
the Moriscos’ revolt in the Alpujarra mountains 1568-70.
On January 1, 1567 Felipe II had ordered the termination
of all Muslim customs and names by the end of the year.
The insurrection began in December 1568.
An old Cadi convenes a secret meeting of Moors in Granada.
Don Juan Malec is from a long line of African kings
and explains the oppressive new laws.
He argues that it is better to suffer fate
without flinching than to lord it over others.
He notes that wounds of steel can be cured faster
than injuries by words that never heal.
He has no son but only his daughter Clara to redress
the injustice, and several people pledge support.
At home Clara says she is willing to die to gain revenge,
and Don Alvaro Tuzani asks for her hand.
She is devoted to him but must punish their enemy first.
The Morisco leaders Malec, Don Alonso Zuñiga,
and Don Fernando de Valor have Don Juan de Mendoza
a prisoner and want Clara to marry him,
and she agrees to gain revenge.
Alvaro is jealous and also wants to kill him.
Alvaro’s sister Isabel Tuzani visits
Mendoza and Garces in prison.
While she hides, Alvaro comes in and challenges Mendoza.
When Alvaro trips and falls during the sword fight,
she intervenes to save him.
Valor and Zuñiga come in.
Alvaro says he is related to Malec,
and the conflict is resolved.
In act 2 Spanish forces are led by Don Juan of Austria
and Mendoza near Galera against 30,000 Moors.
Grand Corregidor Zuñiga was assassinated.
Valor has made Tuzani’s sister Isabel his queen.
Muslims have renounced their Christian names.
Don Lope de Figueroa arrives from Flanders.
Garces carries Alcuzcuz in, and the Moor
says he will guide the Spaniards.
Malec arranges for Clara to marry Alvaro.
Alcuzcuz escapes to the Moors. Garces is wounded
but makes it back to the Spanish camp.
Alvaro was sent to Gavia but promises
to visit Clara at Galera.
She prevents Alvaro from killing Alcuzcuz.
A cannon destroys Galera which surrenders,
and Spaniards loot the town.
Alvaro finds Clara badly wounded,
and she recognizes him before dying.
Valor’s forces arrive too late.
Lope and Mendoza counsel that
they should not kill so many
Moors, and Juan of Austria proclaims
a pardon to all who ask and obey.
He demands his share of the jewelry,
and Alvaro notices pearls he gave to Clara.
He tries to find the man who killed her.
Alvaro and Alcuzcuz are arrested.
Garces in shackles joins them, and he tells how
he captured a beautiful Moorish woman,
admired her jewelry,
tried to rape her, and finally stabbed her.
Alvaro realizes it was Clara and kills Garces.
Mendoza and soldiers come in.
Alvaro kills a soldier and escapes,
and he finds Isabel by Beria.
Juan of Austria pardons them and Alcuzcuz.
Calderon showed his tolerance in this
sympathetic portrayal of the Moriscos’ revolt.
After the death of Lope de Vega in 1635,
Calderon replaced him as theater director at court.
In 1636 King Felipe IV dubbed him
a knight in the Order of Santiago.
His brother José was a soldier but helped edit the first two
volumes of Pedro’s plays which were published by 1637.
In two decades Calderon wrote more than
seventy plays for the commercial theaters.
From 1640 to 1642 he fought under Duke Olivares
against the rebellion in Catalonia until
he was discharged because of illness.
After the death of Prince Baltasar Carlos in 1646
the theaters in Spain were closed for three years.
Calderon served the Duke of Alba
probably as secretary 1646-50.
During this period both his brothers died,
and his illegitimate son was born.
Calderon joined the Third Order of Saint Francis on
October 11, 1650, and he was ordained
a priest in September 1651.
After that he wrote religious plays and for the court theater.
His first musical play was The Garden of Falerina in 1648,
and two of his operas were performed in 1660.
He published his short religious plays (autos) in 1677,
and in 1680 he listed 110 secular plays
and 70 autos he had written.
Calderon died on May 25, 1681.
His plays continued to be popular for two centuries,
but in the late 19th century the trend toward realism
revived the plays of Lope de Vega.
The tragicomedy Secret Vengeance for Secret Insult
y Calderon is from 1635.
The play takes place in Lisbon and begins with the
entrance of Portugal’s King Sebastian.
The protagonist is the Portuguese army commander,
Don Lope de Almeida, who is granted leave
to complete his proxy marriage.
His friend Don Juan de Silva arrives in ragged clothes
and tells Lope of his misfortunes from seeking honor.
Lope says he is about to meet his bride and invites
his friend to stay with him in his elegant house.
Doña Leonor and her maid Sirena arrive from Castile,
but what she says are tears of joy are actually because
she learned that her lover, Don Luis, is dead.
She is suicidal and is marrying to avenge herself.
The Castilian Don Luis arrives to sell diamonds and gives
one to Leonor, who recognizes it is the one she gave him
as a pledge; but she tells him he came too late.
He says she broke her pledge.
She has him hide and listen to what
she has to say to him and to Lope.
She honors him as her husband but cannot
ove him as he was in former days.
Luis tells his servant Celio he wants to die for Leonor.
In act 2 Lope’s servant Manrique comically woos Sirena.
Lope tells Leonor that King Sebastian is going to war in Africa,
but he is staying to be with her.
She urges him to join the King, but Juan advises him not to go.
Lope suspects her motive and becomes
jealous of the Castilian gentleman.
Leonor receives a letter from Lope
that reminds her of past love.
Sirena arranges for Luis to visit Leonor in the dark.
He urges her to remember their romance,
and she says he went off to Flanders to fight
and was reported killed.
Someone is coming, and Juan and Luis draw their swords.
Luis slips away.
Leonor brings a light, and Lope and Manrique
find Juan who says he saw a man.
Leonor says he must be a robber,
but she stops Lope from searching her bedroom.
Lope with a sword captures Luis who makes up a story
why he is there, and Lope offers him hospitality.
In act 3 Juan counsels Lope who decides that
secret revenge will hide the insult to his honor.
He tells the King he will go to war.
Lope wonders if Leonor is really guilty and puts off revenge.
On the seashore Juan kills a soldier
who insulted him but is wounded.
Leonor writes Luis to visit her,
and Lope offers him a ride on a boat he hired.
They are alone, and Lope kills Luis and then
sets his house on fire, killing Leonor.
Lope expects to be killed in battle.
This tragedy reflects the violent militarism of the
Spanish empire, though the villain is portrayed
as a Portuguese killing Spaniards for a Spanish audience.
Calderon’s The Surgeon of His Honor is a tragedy
of misguided honor and jealousy.
Prince Enrique falls from his horse
and is carried to the home of the physician Don Gutierre,
whose wife Mencia attends to Enrique.
He insists on being moved because
he was in love with her before she married.
She urges him to put aside his jealousy and stay.
Mencia wonders if Gutierre is going to see Leonor whom
he declined to marry because he suspected her fidelity.
Leonor was innocent and appeals to King Pedro to restore
her honor, and he promises he will.
Gutierre defends himself before the King
and wants to fight Arias with his sword.
He and Arias are put in jail.
Mencia asks Prince Enrique not to tarnish her honor
and has him hide from her husband
who arrives on parole unexpectedly.
Enrique escapes unseen but leaves
behind his sword which Gutierre finds.
King Pedro has Gutierre and Arias released,
and Enrique has them promise to be friends.
Arias proposes to Leonor who declines
because she wants her name cleared.
Gutierre sneaks into his house and calls to Mencia,
and her replies feed his suspicion that she is expecting Enrique;
Gutierre has diagnosed her dishonor.
In act 3 he tells the King that he suspects Enrique
but guarantees his safety.
While Gutierre hides, the King questions his brother Enrique.
When the King returns his sword,
Enrique accidentally cuts Pedro’s hand.
Mencia is worried that Gutierre is jealous.
His servant Coquin delivers a message from Enrique
to Mencia
who dreams she is drowning in blood.
Gutierre leads the physician Ludovico with his head covered
to Mencia and forces him to bleed her to death.
The King learns what happened from Ludovico,
but instead of punishing Gutierre he has him
marry Leonor to restore her reputation.
This startling ending shows how strong the Spanish sense
of honor was and how men could get away with such crimes.
Calderon wrote Three Judgments in One about 1636.
Don Mendo Torrellas and his daughter Doña Violante
are captured by outlaws, but their leader
Don Lope de Urrea prevents a fight.
Mendo knows Don Lope’s father of the same name
and promises to seek redress on his behalf.
Lope tells how he loves his mother Blanca and came
to hate his father and became a criminal.
The elder Don Lope tells King Pedro of Aragon
what happened, and the King gives the case
to the new Minister of Justice Mendo.
Young Lope and his man Vicente see Violante
undressing and admire her beauty.
Lope and Violante fall in love.
Lope goes home, gets a lecture from his father,
and promises to reform.
Mendo arrives with his servant Beatriz.
Vicente provides comic relief flirting with Beatriz and Elmira.
Don Guillen tries to woo Violante, but she finds him boring.
He becomes jealous of Lope, and they fight.
The elder Lope breaks it up and sides with Guillen
against his son Lope who strikes his father.
The elder Lope gives his account to the King
who orders Mendo to arrest young Lope.
Mendo detains him and tells the King what actually occurred,
and they decide to arrest Guillen and the elder Lope as well.
Doña Blanca tells the King how Mendo and her late sister
Laura gave birth to Lope whom
Blanca raised with her husband Lope.
Blanca also tells Mendo to plead for his son Lope.
The King promises a triple judgment against young Lope,
Mendo, and Blanca which is discovered
to be the hanging of young Lope.
This tragedy reflects Calderon’s difficult relationship
with his strict father and the harshness of Spanish justice.
Calderon wrote The Mighty Magician (El mágico prodigioso)
in 1637 for the feast of Corpus Christi in the town of Yepes.
Cyprian and Justina were Christian martyrs
executed under Emperor Diocletian in 304.
Cyprian is studying theology,
and the Demon offers to take the opposite view.
Lelius and Florus are competing for the love of Justina,
and Cyprian tries to mediate their conflict
by finding out whom she prefers.
She rejects them both and says that
Cyprian’s love is too bold.
In act 2 Cyprian realizes he loves Justina,
though she will only love him in death.
He offers his soul, and the Demon accepts.
Cyprian wants to possess her and promises his immortal soul
in a contract written with his blood.
The Demon promises to teach him magic in twelve months
so that he can attain his goal.
In act 3 after a year voices try to influence Justina.
The Demon says winning over her thoughts is halfway,
but she retains her free will over action.
A phantom of Justina is created, and Cyprian embraces it,
only to find it is a skeleton.
He complains the Demon deceived him
and argues the contract is annulled.
Cyprian tries to use his sword but cannot touch
the Demon who admits he is the Devil.
Cyprian prays to God, and the Demon says God saved his life.
Lelius says Cyprian is acting like a madman in Antioch.
Cyprian calmly tells Governor Aurelius that Justina is protected
by God, and he also acknowledges the Infinite and Eternal One.
He says the headsman can cut off his head.
Justina and Cyprian are prisoners.
He says his sins are immense,
but she replies that God’s mercy is even greater.
In the final scene a scaffold shows the heads
and bodies of Justina and Cyprian.
The Mayor of Zalamea by Calderon is from the early 1640s.
Soldiers camp near the town of Zalamea.
Rebolledo and his sweetheart La Chispa sing that officers
can fight the war and kill Arabs who are not their enemies.
A Captain and a Sergeant have designs on Isabel,
the daughter of the richest farmer Crespo,
and Don Mendo is trying to court her.
Crespo and his son Juan have Isabel
and her cousin Inés stay in the attic to be safe.
The Captain and Rebolledo pretend to quarrel
and run up to the attic.
Crespo and Juan have swords to protect their honor.
The strict commander Don Lope de Figueroa arrives
and orders the rope treatment for the Captain and Rebolledo.
Lope confines all soldiers to quarters and stays with Crespo.
He and Lope argue for their honor and eventually
become friends, and they dine with Isabel and Juan.
Mendo and soldiers disturb the house,
and Lope and Crespo make them go away.
Lope appoints Juan his orderly,
gives Isabel a diamond medallion, and departs.
Crespo advises Juan to be humble and courteous.
The Captain and soldiers break in and abduct Isabel.
Crespo follows them, fights the soldiers,
and is wounded and carried away.
In the forest Isabel has lost her honor and cries out.
She finds her father and unties him,
and both want to be killed.
She tells how she was brutally treated and saw her
brother Juan wound the Captain, allowing her to escape.
Crespo and Isabel go home.
The Town Clerk arrives and says Crespo has been
chosen Mayor; he also says the King is coming
and that the Captain was wounded.
The Captain expects a military trial,
but Crespo assumes authority as the new Mayor.
First he offers the Captain all his property as a dowry
if he will marry Isabel;
but he declines and says he spared Crespo’s life.
Farmers arrive, and Crespo has the Captain
arrested and shackled along with two soldiers.
Juan comes home, and Crespo has his son
detained for attacking the Captain.
Lope returns and quarrels with Crespo over the prisoners.
Crespo says his daughter was raped,
and he is gathering evidence from witnesses.
King Felipe II arrives and decides that Mayor Crespo’s
verdict was justified, but he must turn over the prisoner.
They discover that the Captain has already been executed
by garroting, and the King accepts that as justified too.
He makes Crespo the permanent Mayor,
and Isabel has decided to become a nun.
Calderon’s The Painter of His Dishonor was written
in the 1640s and is set in Naples,
a kingdom dominated by the Spanish empire.
The painter Don Juan Roca is married to beautiful Serafina.
His old friend, Don Luis, has a son Alvaro and daughter Porcia,
who is courted by the Prince of Orsino.
Serafina tells Porcia that she was secretly engaged to Alvaro,
but he was drowned in a shipwreck.
Serafina faints, and Porcia goes for help.
Alvaro was rescued and arrives as Serafina wakes up;
but she is married to Roca and rejects Alvaro.
In act 2 he returns disguised as a sailor
and tries to win her back.
Masked Alvaro dances with her at a ball.
Roca rescues her from a fire and turns her over to Alvaro
so that he can rescue others.
Alvaro abducts Serafina and takes her away on his ship.
Roca vows revenge.
In act 3 Porcia gets her father Luis to forgive his son Alvaro.
He is keeping Serafina as a prisoner,
where Porcia meets with the Prince.
Roca searches for his wife
and offers the Prince a new painting.
The Prince is smitten with Serafina and arranges for Roca
to paint her while he is concealed, and he recognizes her.
She has a bloody nightmare and screams.
Alvaro rushes in to comfort her,
and Roca shoots both of them dead.
The Prince protects Roca, and both fathers of the dead
agree that revenging honor was justified.
The Prince says he will marry Porcia.
In this tragicomedy one character describes Spain as
“a warlike nation and jealous,” and this play shows
how these can manifest in some circumstances.
This drama explores protecting women from soldiers,
a common problem in the Spanish empire.
A peasant Mayor’s authority is respected
but only because the King approves.
Notes
1. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes, tr. Edith Grossman, chapter 48, p. 416.
2. Ibid., Part 2, chapter 1, p. 465.
3. The Discovery of the New World by Christopher Columbus by Lope de Vega, tr. Frieda Fligelman, p. 58.
4. The Innocent Child by Lope de Vega, tr. Michael Jacobs, p. 153.
5. Fuente Ovejuna in Three Major Plays by Lope de Vega, tr. Gwynne Edwards, p. 61.
6. The Good Message of Jesus the Christ, tr. Sanderson Beck, Thomas 102, p. 158.
7. Life Is a Dream by Calderon de la Barca,
tr. Roy Campbell in The Classic Theatre, Volume III: Six Spanish Plays, ed. Eric Bentley, p. 478.