Life and Works of Lope de Vega and Calderón de la Barca
Lope de Vega
Life
Lope de Vega was born in Madrid to humble origins. He was self-taught and worked as a secretary for nobles. His work is marked by his active love life. He was banished for writing a satire against a lover who had abandoned him. He later eloped with a woman he called Belisa in his compositions. He remarried a widower, immortalized as Camila Lucinda in his poems. After the death of his wife and his son Carlos Felix, he was ordained a priest and stopped writing. In 1616, he fell in love with and married Marta Nevares (Amaryllis). Three years after the death of Marta and a son, a daughter was kidnapped by a knight, and eventually, Lope died.
Poetry and Storytelling
He was an excellent poet, the simplest and most natural of his time. He wrote traditional lyrical poetry, sonnets, and epic poetry. In his love and religious poetry, with its autobiographical background, he achieves an emotional intensity. As a narrator, he experimented with different genres and reached a remarkable quality in his novel in dialogue, La Dorothea.
He was a very popular poet for his ballads and sonnets, written under pseudonyms. He cultivated traditional lyric forms (Maya, Albada, etc.) and sonnets with themes of love, religion, and burlesque in works like “Rimas,” “Rimas Sacras,” and “Rimas Humanas y Divinas.” His poetry is sincere and emotional with a human tone. He composed the Renaissance epic poem “La Hermosura de Angélica” and the mock-epic poem “La Gatomaquia.”
He cultivated the short novel in the style of Cervantes, the Byzantine novel (El Peregrino en su Patria), the pastoral novel (La Arcadia), and especially the novel in dialogue (La Dorothea), which recounts his youthful love from the perspective of maturity.
The Theater of Lope de Vega
Home Theater
Simpler than the previous one, it was molded to the public taste and gave agility to the representation (New Comedy).
He created a theater that connected with the audience of its time and paved the way for later theater. It was the culmination of all previous attempts to make a modern theater, and it so marked the history of the genre that we can distinguish between the pre-Lope skit and the subsequent theater. He wrote thousands of plays, and around 400 are conserved. Some of them were written in less than a day. In his time, he was classified as a “monster of nature.”
The New Comedy
Created by Lope de Vega, it introduced many innovations to the skit: he abandoned the rule of three unities, mixed the tragic and the comic, and incorporated humorous scenes and lyrics. He expounded his ideas about theater in his Arte Nuevo de Hacer Comedias. His theater was intended to please the public, and to achieve this, he abandoned the classical rules. This new formula achieved great success and became the standard for theater throughout the 17th century.
The Break with the Classic Rules:
- Rejection of the Three Unities: The work reflects a space, time, and action. It had to be a single space, a single plot, and a maximum of one day. He considered changing public tastes. He held numerous scenes that show dynamic and striking at the time: it stretches everything for you. The unity of action is the most respected, with the main action establishing a high school that serves as a contrast. Many works show a main action between the lady and gentleman and a secondary between maid and servant.
- The work is presented in three acts: They are replaced by the traditional five acts. Take this innovation of Italian companies and Valencian speeding up the performance. Roughly, acts correspond to the exposure, middle, and end of the argument. Up to half of the first act no one can foresee the end.
- Mixture of the tragic and the comic: Mix colors and different environments.
- Use different kinds of verses (Polymetry): His work is written in verse in which the octosyllable predominates.
In addition to these new standards in the Arte Nuevo de Hacer Comedias, Lope gives a series of recommendations on the language, characters, and themes:
- The Propriety: Matching the type of character and manner of speaking. Each character must speak in a manner that characterizes him.
- The Figure of the Gracioso (Funny Man): It appears regularly. It is a character who evolves from the fool of Lope de Rueda and sometimes reaches quite complex.
- Collating Lyrical Elements: Songs and dances to give color and striking spectacle, something highly valued in the audience of the moment.
Topics in the Theater of Lope de Vega
He defended freedom in the choice of subjects, and his theater covers a wide range of topics. The subjects he felt that the public were most moved by were conflicts of honor and love. Lope’s themes are classified as:
- The Religious Theme: Appears in morality plays and comedies. Some dramatize the lives of saints and other collected medieval legends. He also wrote dramas of biblical inspiration.
- The Comedies of Spanish History and Legends: Are set in the Middle Ages and are based on chronicles, legends, ballads, and songs (El Caballero de Olmedo). Included are dramas of unjust power, in which conflicts arise between the people and the nobility. The village faces or avenges the noble, and the just king agrees with the community that has offended his honor (Peribáñez y el Comendador de Ocaña and Fuenteovejuna). The figure of the king is strengthened, and this is hailed by the people because it represents justice from the abuse of feudal nobles. The figure of the monarch is not disputed since when it is the king who is unjust and abuses his power, the offense runs out of revenge (La Estrella de Sevilla).
- Contemporary Comedies of Love and Entanglement: Full of misunderstandings and intrigues that are located in rural or urban environments of the time and that revolve around the theme of love. They usually have a casual tone and a happy ending (El Acero de Madrid, El Perro del Hortelano, and La Dama Boba).
Characters of the Theater of Lope de Vega
He tends to repeat characters that are defined by how they act, not by their nature, and become role models. There are too nuanced and psychologically passions or ideas presented. The most common are:
- The King: Who represents power, who restores order and supports social justice conflicts.
- The Powerful Noble: Proud of their lineage, often antagonistic when it abuses its power and causes a conflict between their subjects, they are demanding justice to the king or retaliate.
- The Gentleman or Nobleman: Maintaining family order. Appears as father, brother, or husband who watches over the honor and family honor. This is usually the star of the comedies of honor. In some works, this role covers the villain who represents honesty and moral sense.
- The Gallant and the Lady: The pair of young lovers are always of the same social group. The lead actor is known for its generosity, attractive and courage, a key figure in many sitcoms. The lady is beautiful and above all list:’s cunning overcomes the obstacles that stand between her and her lover.
- The Gracioso (Funny Man) and the Maid: Accompanies the graceful and gallant servant, friend, or confidant, and is its counterpoint: cowardly and materialistic. His genius gives a different tone to the more tense scenes and sometimes surprised by his good sense. Often living a love story parallels that of the trouser. Lady’s maid is usually also a confidant and the bridge between lady and leading man, carrying letters and giving information. Often living history with the servant of the leading man. Sometimes this role covers a friend of the lady or the lady who can act also as funny.
The School of Lope de Vega
Many writers continued his theatrical model: Guillén de Castro (Las Mocedades del Cid), Juan Ruiz de Alarcón (La Verdad Sospechosa), and Tirso de Molina (La Prudencia en la Mujer, Don Gil de las Calzas Verdes, and El Burlador de Sevilla).
Calderón de la Barca
Life
He was a thoughtful man. Born in Madrid to a noble family, he studied with the Jesuits and at the universities of Salamanca and Alcalá, and took an ecclesiastical studies course. Philip IV appointed him official court dramatist. He was a captain in the war in Catalonia but left to devote himself to writing. He was ordained a priest and served as chaplain in Toledo. Thousands of miles away, the king appointed him his chaplain, and he returned to the court.
The Theater of Calderón de la Barca
It reflects a worldview very common in the Baroque period, pessimistic and conservative: life is vanity, a dream from which you wake up when you die, and the world is a stage in which we operate according to the role that the Author-God has awarded us. Theater is a cult that poses deep issues through symbolic characters and reveals careful elaboration in the plot and style.
By removing the secondary and further developing the central scheme of the work, he develops the theme and characters. He makes all the characters subservient to one main character, which he delves into brilliantly, and reduces the motives or themes of the play. In almost all of his plays, he raises a single issue and establishes a main character that stands out clearly, while all the subplots and other characters fade into the background. The structure is very well locked. Calderón’s theater evolves in this process of schematization. After doing so, his theater is increasingly one of ideas and symbols. He never criticizes the society of his time nor the prevailing social or moral values. This worldview is often expressed in his theater through rigorous arguments that show his philosophical and theological formation.
- The Language: Is typical of the Baroque Calderón: Concepts and culterano; abound antithesis, ellipsis … is a minority religion and style, even in the most Traditionalists language is simpler.
- Characters: They are very elaborate, and sometimes players take on a symbolic dimension. Segismundo in Life is a Dream represents the Baroque doubt on the truth, and with Pedro Crespo in The Mayor of Zalamea, he embodies honor.
- The Art: Contributed to his success. Spectacular innovations introduced since the resources available courtly theater. Sometimes helped him with that achievement engineers staged brilliant.
Topics in Calderón’s Theater
The most characteristic themes are the philosophical and theological. He enhances the concepts of honor and monarchy and creates magnificent and swashbuckling sitcoms.
He raises philosophical issues of great depth in the developed logical reasoning, revealing a solid philosophical formation with the Jesuits. On the subject of honor, in a few moves, this rigid fundamentalist schemes honor code and honor appears in the drama of honor and jealousy (The Doctor in his Honor). Topics:
- Religious Drama: “The Devotion of the Cross” about a bandit devoted to Jesus, “The Slave of the Devil” a student who sells his soul to the devil.
- Contemporary Swashbuckling Comedies: “House with Two Doors, is to Keep Bad” or “Fairy Lady.” Works are more numerous but less known are the creation of the plot.
- Mythological Drama: “The Daughter of the Air” and “Echo and Narcissus” in their language is more cult.
- Dramas of Honor and Jealousy: In some legends are historical reasons “The Girl of Gomez Arias” and “Mayor of Zalamea.” In some of them appears with great intensity the tragic sense of blackfish conflict between the duty imposed by the code of honor and the man who should run it arises with tragic overtones in such works as “The Physician of his Honor,” “The Painter of his Disgrace,” and “The Greatest Monster, Jealousy.”
- Philosophical Drama: As the “Life is a Dream” is undoubtedly the best of their works. Life is like a dream, a fiction that can vanish at any moment and raises the conflict between the pad and the destination are also honored, the contrast between reality and appearance, power and the monarchy.
- Autos Sacramentales: In these works is where best develops his philosophical and theological thought. It shows its full potential and scholastic reasoning. “The Great Theater of the World,” “The Big Market in the World,” and “Life is a Dream.”
He was a model for other authors such as Moreto, and Agustín Moreto.