El medico de su honra – Lecture 1

Golden Age – El Siglo de Oro

 1550-1681
 Number of major artist achievements
 In playhouses, audiences gathered to see a new type of theatre

Lope de Vega (1562 – 1635)

 In late 16th century Spain, plays were performed in public theatres
 ‘Principe’ and ‘Cruz’ were the first theatres in Spain
o They were converted yards – Which in turn become popular
venues
 Lope reduced the number of acts in a play from 4 to 3
o He also downplayed the importance of following classical rules
o Made the overall length of plays longer
o They lasted around 2 hours
 ‘Entremés’ – 10 minute farce in between the acts
Lope de Vega – ‘arte Nuevo de hacer comedias en este tiempo’ (1609)
 Outlined his views on theatre
 Tries to please two communites
Vega
 Dispensed with neoclassical rules
 Broadens scope of the drama
 Made plays polymetric – Different verse forms

Neoclassical rules
 European renaissance
 Dramatic theorists retranslated and reinterpreted
o Aristotle – ‘Poetics’
o Fundamental to what happened in theatres
o Defined tragic hero
o Defines ‘tragedy’ and removes it from ‘comedy’
o Defined scope and style of drama
o His rules were taken as prescriptive
 Lope merged tragedy and comedy
 Frowned upon by many critics and thinkers

Three Greek Unities

 Place – Cant move from one location
 Time – Takes place in 24 hours
 Action – Remain focused on a main plot
 These were neoclassical interpretations of Aristotle’s rules
 Mainly followed in 17th Century France
Lope’s argument – Life is a mixture of tragedy and comedy and all things in
between, so my plays represent life
 The public liked these plays
Aristotle – Tragedy was downfall of great, historical men
Some sources for Spanish plots
 Spanish history and mythology
 The Classics
 The Bible
 Lives of Saints
 Ballads and Popular songs
 Folk tales
 Spanish romances
 Italian ‘novelas’
Alternates between native Spanish forms (octosyllabic) and Italian forms (7-11
syllable lines)
 Sounds very different when characters speak
 Different forms used for different purposes
Public demand
 Plays written quickly
 In collaboration
 Quick turn over of plays
Lope wrote around 1000 plays
 Just the most prolific of a bunch of prolific playwrights
 Around 10,000 plays were written during this time period

Calderón
 First plays appeared as Vega reached old age
 Youth misspent – Rebelling against father and wanting to join the
priesthood
 Became a court dramatist
o Great reputation and title
o Sole writer of religious street theatre
 1651 – Became religious and decided the last 30 years of life his
 Seen as more difficult that Lope
o Language is more highly stylised
o Wrote in most theatrical genres – Many comedies
o ‘La dama duende’ and many ‘entremés’
 Tragedies not necessarily typical of the era
 Always covered social and philosophical issues
 Age of Spanish Inquisition – couldn’t criticise Catholic Church

‘El pintor de su deshonra’

‘A secreto agrario, secreta verganza’
‘El médico de su honra’
 ‘Dramas de honor’/Wife murder plays/Sorricide dramas

El medico
 Date of composition is unknown
o No manuscript
 First published in a collection of his plays
o 1637
 A play called ‘medico de su honra’ was performed in 1625
 o This could have been a different play with the same name
o Inspired by Calderón
 No certain sources
 Best guess is in the first half of the 1630s
 Owes status to critics who admired his dramas
 Not an accurate representation of life at the time
o Doesn’t hold a mirror up to the society of the time

Enrique later killed Pedro and took over the kingdom

 Pedro has a premonition of his death at Enrique’s hands
 Hears a ballad that recounts his own murder
 Would have informed an intelligent audience