Spanish Theater of the Golden Age
Lope de Vega
Lope de Vega was a prolific writer of Spanish literature. In addition to his lyrical production, he was also a playwright, which perhaps brought him more fame.
Drama
The stage production of Lope de Vega is enormous. Forty-two mystery plays and more than three hundred comedies are preserved.
Best-Known Works
- Comedies with a national theme: Fuenteovejuna, The Knight of Olmedo
- Comedies with an invented subject in which love is the single most cultivated theme. These include swashbuckling comedies. To this type belong such works as La dama boba or The Dog in the Manger.
The production of Lope covers many other topics: religious, mythological, pastoral, history, foreign, etc.
Style
- Lope is characterized by naturalness and spontaneity. The verses are noted for their dramatic emotion and lyrical simplicity.
- He handles formal procedures with skill without falling into unnecessary artifice.
- One of his best achievements is the integration of popular and high culture. He often uses popular songs and traditional verses integrated into a formal scheme, reaching a successful, new, and original aesthetic dimension. This line has had numerous followers.
Fuenteovejuna
It is considered one of the best works of Lope. The story is based on real events set at the time of the Catholic Monarchs. It depicts a conflict between the people of Fuenteovejuna, Córdoba, and its tyrannical governor.
Tirso de Molina
Tirso de Molina is embedded in the school of Lope, with greater originality and dramatic talent than other playwrights of his time.
Work
He wrote some eighty plays, among which are The Pardoner of Seville and The Convicted Suspicious.
Style
Tirso follows the Lopen model but writes a theater with distinctive traits:
- Creation of characters: His deep knowledge of the human soul makes him especially adept at drawing female characters so that they represent a certain psychology and become role models.
- Comic: His humor is often acerbic and critical, which gives his works a satirical tone. It is especially striking in the secondary characters.
His style is also characterized by the contrast between the long poetic interventions of the protagonists and the jeers of the secondary characters.
One of the merits of Tirso is knowing how to unite in a single play two independent traditions: the seducer of women and the macabre dinner.
The Pardoner of Seville is the first work in which the legendary Don Juan appears, who, along with Don Quixote, is the most universal and popular hero of Spanish classical literature.
Calderón de la Barca
During the seventeenth century, the national comedy reached its peak of perfection with the Baroque school, to which Calderón also belongs. Rojas Zorrilla and Agustín Moreto, among others, also belong to this school.
Work
Calderón’s play is usually divided into two stages:
- After 1621, the first period begins, in which he excels at writing courtly and swashbuckling comedies, such as La dama duende or House with Two Doors, Bad to Keep.
- Between 1630 and 1640, his second period reaches maturity as a playwright. The following belong to this decade:
- Great tragedies and biblical plays: Absalom’s Hair and The Honorary Doctor.
- The Mayor of Zalamea
- He also wrote what would be his greatest work: Life is a Dream, an exceptional drama about man’s freedom and the limits of social ethics or reason of state.
At this stage of creative fulfillment, a true crisis arises: social unrest joins the closing of theaters. Calderón and other playwrights have no spaces to represent their works. When they reopen, the writer dedicates himself to improving the morality of his plays.
Style
Calderón’s style is the embodiment of the dramatic system created by Lope. Its most characteristic features are:
- Order and structure approach in the beginning, middle, and end. Unity of action is enhanced, eliminating minor characters and events, and everything is concentrated around the protagonist.
- Calderón also stands out for the stylization of his speech, which translates into special care for formal aspects.
- Intensification of both linguistic and scenic resources: Calderón is the Spanish Baroque playwright par excellence.
Life is a Dream
Life is a Dream is Calderón’s most famous play and one of the greatest works of universal drama.
The subject and the development of the action are well known. Prince Segismundo is imprisoned from birth in a place somewhere in Poland, not knowing who he is or why he is denied freedom. He has been watched over and educated by Clotaldo, Rosaura’s father. Rosaura and her servant Clarín arrive at this prison. She has been abandoned by Astolfo after a relationship with him and goes to Poland with the intention of regaining her honor.
In a later scene, King Basil, Segismundo’s father, explains to his court the reasons for his son’s imprisonment: a horoscope predicted that the prince was bound to be tyrannical, and Basil wants to check the veracity of this prediction. To do this, he has Segismundo moved to the palace asleep and woken up thinking it was all a dream. Finally, Segismundo decides to do good, and after being released by a rebellion, he takes freedom and self-control, forgives his father, and is willing to be a righteous king. His control over his own passions is also demonstrated in his resignation to the beautiful lady Rosaura, with whom he had fallen in love.