Lope de Vega: Innovator of 17th-Century Spanish Theater

Lope de Vega's Poetic and Theatrical Legacy

Lope de Vega wrote countless poems. He wrote popular-type compositions (ballads, carols) and engaged in nature worship (sonnets, especially). Vega's poetry is, in general, vital, spontaneous, and simple. The theater was the most innovative and successful genre in the seventeenth century. The tastes and demands of the public prompted Lope to renovate the Spanish theater of the time. In his "New Art of Making Comedies," he established the patterns of New Comedy:

• A mixture of the tragic and the comic in the same work: This mixture provided greater variety and animation to the work.
• Rupture of the rule of three unities: Humanists had decided that a play should be confined to a single action (unity of action), and it should be developed in a maximum of one day (unity of time) and a single space (unity of place). Lope extended the time of the work, introduced secondary actions, and used multiple settings to give more variety to the show.
• Division of the play into three acts: These three acts were the introduction, climax, and denouement. The acts are divided in turn into short scenes.
• Metric variety: The works are always written in verse but use different types of stanzas according to the development of the action.
• Introduction of the character of the "funny man," usually a servant responsible for providing a comic mirror of the words, ideas, or feelings of his master.
• Inclusion in the work of folk songs and dances.

Lope de Vega's Theatrical Work

The theatrical work of Lope de Vega (1562 - 1635) is vast, as he wrote 1500 comedies. The main purpose of theater is to entertain the audience. Thus, his plays are full of dramatic action and excitement. His works are classified according to the following themes:

• Historical and legendary: Examples: Fuente Ovejuna, The Knight of Olmedo...
• Comedy of manners, which develop animated arguments, intrigue, and entanglement, usually of a loving character. Examples: La dama boba, El perro del hortelano...

Argumentative Techniques

• Argument of universal validity: Something that everyone accepts as valid.
• Contribution
• Associations
• Data
• Tests
• Examples
• Rhetorical questions
• Rebuttal or denial of counterarguments
• Citations or arguments of authority, e.g., "According to data from..." / "Aristotle said..."