Spanish Baroque Theatre: Lope de Vega and Beyond

Posted on Sep 23, 2024 in Latin

LITERATURE. ITEM 14: THE THEATRE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY: LOPE DE VEGA AND BAROQUE THEATRE

Lope de Vega’s Comedy

Lope de Vega’s comedy creates national elements of theater by blending previous themes of the national tradition. The result is an invention of his that all other authors mimicked.

Baroque Comedy: Main Features

Lope’s main features are based on the principle of artistic freedom, that is, he refuses to submit to the rules of classical theater and rejects the three dramatic unities. For Lope, the events can occur at different times and places within the same work. In his work, he develops a main action, but other subplots can occur. Tragic and comic elements blend. The play is divided into 3 acts or days: exposition, entanglement, and outcome. The change from one act to another usually involves a jump in time of long hours, days, or years.

Themes

The arguments are varied. In most cases, conflicts are related to 2 themes:

  • Love as the main trigger of conflict. Sometimes treated as an uncontrollable passion and sometimes as a noble sentiment.
  • Honor is a personal characteristic, whereby individuals are virtuous and pure-blooded. Honor is the opinion others have about the virtue of an individual.

Image of Society

The image of society conveyed by the theater is a harmonic image, linked to the celestial order. Above all is the king, the guarantor of order and justice, whose power is of divine nature.

Characters

The characters are types of comedy drama that reflect general human characteristics, permanent features, and fixed functions within the work. The most common are:

  • The Actor and the Queen: At the center of intrigue and love, and the plot is usually resolved with their marriage.
  • The Servant and the Maid: Faithful servants of the lover and queen. The servant brings funny comic elements.
  • The Parent: In charge of family honor, will be responsible to avenge the insults received.
  • King: Resolves all conflicts, distributes justice rightly, and protects all subjects.
  • The Villain or Farmer: Representative of a rich popular wealthy class, which belongs to maintain their honor.
  • Other Characters: Students, farmers, soldiers, etc.

Literary Form

The literary form of the Baroque is verse. The use of one or another verse is often constrained by the situation. For serious matters, they use the pentameter, and for lighter topics, they use minor art verses. Poetic decorum is maintained, i.e., the fit between the character and his way of speaking. The actor and the lady express a cultured level, the father uses serious speech, the king uses a solemn style, and the servants use vulgar language.

The Stage Show in the Seventeenth Century

Works are represented in the corrales de comedias. The corral was a neighborhood courtyard with a stage at one end. The scenario was simple.

Distribution of the Audience

The distribution of the audience responded to their social status: men in the courtyard, the women in the cazuela (facing the stage), and in the aposentos (balcony) the main people.

Structure of the Show

  • An author recited a praise to capture the attention of the public.
  • The first act was performed.
  • When done, a brief comic interlude was performed.
  • The second act was represented and another entremés was staged.
  • The third act was represented and a masquerade ball would close the show.

Lope de Vega

Lope owes his fame to his work as a playwright. The fundamental ideas of his plays were simple ideas:

  • The defense of the monarchy
  • The claim of honor
  • The concept of pride in belonging to a predominant empire
  • Unaffected religiosity
  • Honest simplicity in the approach to conflict and development through heavy doses of action and intrigue

Top Works Known

  • Comedy of Spanish History and Legend: The Best Mayor, the King, Fuenteovejuna, The Knight of Olmedo, and Peribañez and the Commander of Ocaña.
  • Swashbuckling Comedies: The Dumb Lady and The Dog in the Manger.
  • Comedias Novels: The Punishment Without Revenge and The Villain in His Corner.

Peribañez and the Commander of Ocaña

A young commander falls in love with Casilda while celebrating her wedding with Peribañez, a wealthy farmer. The commander has a painter portray her without her knowing. Peribañez sees the portrait and understands what the commander wants. The commander seeks to conquer Casilda without success, while her husband is traveling. The commander is appointed captain of a company that has to fight in Granada and is knighted. This makes Peribañez distrust him, and after the first day’s journey, he returns to his home, where he discovers that the commander tries to rape Casilda. Peribañez kills the commander and turns himself in, and the king forgives him.

Caballero de Olmedo

It represents the love of Don Alonso for Ines, a young woman in Medina who has rejected her suitor Don Rodrigo. A matchmaker helps Alonso court her, but he meets Rodrigo and his brother Fernando, with whom they fight. Ines’s father insists on marrying her to Don Rodrigo, and to avoid it, she pretends to want to become a nun and asks for a Latin teacher and a servant, who will be Alonso’s servant and the sorceress Fabia. The arrival of King John II to Medina is celebrated with bullfights. Rodrigo comes out triumphant and Alonso humiliated. Rodrigo and Fernando kill Alonso. But the king will make them pay with their lives for the death of the knight of Olmedo.

Other Authors Continued the Theater of Lope

Tirso de Molina

Pseudonym of Gabriel Téllez. The third century’s most important playwright. He follows Lope de Vega, rejects the three unities, mixes the tragic and comic, and introduces lyrical elements inspired by many subjects. He also delves into the psychology of his characters. His best-known work is The Trickster of Seville and the Stone Guest, which creates the myth of Don Juan Tenorio, a character who seduces and abandons several women. In one of his adventures, he kills the father of one of them, Commander Gonzalo, and receives a divine punishment. Upon returning to Seville, he mocks the statue on Gonzalo’s grave and invites it to dinner. The statue appears in the inn and invites him to dinner at the church where the tomb of the Commander is. Don Juan accepts and visits the tomb, but the statue grabs him and drags him to hell.

Guillen de Castro

He used swift and sober verse. In his works, he focused on ethical conflicts of noble society. Top works are Las Mocedades del Cid and Los Malcasados de Valencia.

Juan Ruiz de Alarcón

Of Mexican origin, he writes comedies with criticism of Spanish society. The moral and social censure encouraged most of his work, which condemns lying, laziness, malicious gossip, and religious hypocrisy. His main works are The Truth Suspected and The Examination of Suspicious Husbands.

Topic 1. Communication

Communication means the process of transmitting information. For communication to occur, it requires the presence of a series of elements that influence the process of transmitting information. A sender sends a message to a receiver via a channel, and it uses a code, all in a given situation.

Classes of Signs

  • According to the channel: acoustic, tactile, visual, olfactory, and gustatory
  • Relationship of the sign and the reference: Signs, Icons, Symbols, Representative

Functions of Language

  • Referential: To convey factual information of reality, context-related
  • Expressive: Expresses the speaker’s mood
  • Phatic: Related to the issuer: the relationship between the emission and the receiver is open, connected with the channel
  • Appellee: Intended to attract the intention of the listener
  • Metalinguistic: Receptor-related: they talk about their own language, related to the code
  • Poetic: Draw attention to the way we use language, related to the message

Topic 2. The Standard Language and Social Varieties

The language has many variations in its implementation, which are caused by:

  • Social and cultural circumstances (diastratic)
  • The intent of the speaker and the situation (diafásicas)
  • Geography and areas (diatopic)

Standard language is the language considered as an ideal model that all speakers of a language must know and use. The standard use of language is not rigid or flexible, it joins the variation of language, which gives rise to the levels of language (linguistic registers):

  • Formal: Comes closest to the standard language, with good pronunciation, lexical richness, and good syntactic constructions.
  • Vulgar: Far from the standard language, there are slang (phonetic level, and lexical, morphosyntactic, and semantic levels). These are forms of slang terms used by different individuals, social groups, and professions.
  • Professional jargon: Specific to various activities of society, contains lots of jargon.
  • Social Slang: Called slang, are employed by marginal social groups. Characteristics include the creation of neologisms, foreign words, short for words, and using wildcards.
  • Colloquial language: The most commonly used register. It is characterized by spontaneity and expressiveness. Its features are: relaxed pronunciation, catchphrases, use of short forms, using trunk words and deictic, simple syntax.

Official Languages in Spain

Castilian, Galician, Basque, Catalan, Valencian, and the Catalan variant of the Balearic Islands are historical dialects from the Latin languages that are not consolidated as languages.