A Brief Account of the Life of Lope de Vega de Carpio
– by Samuel Hicks (BFA, '08)The life of Lope de Vega is one filled with war, love, political exile, infidelity, bitter enemies, and religious piety. His life in the theatre of the Siglo de Oro or Spanish Golden Age began in 1562 and ended in 1635. His dramatic works are estimated at around or above 1,500 comedias (such as La Discreta Enamorada) – of which only about 500 remain in existence today - along with hundreds of auto sacramentales . His non-dramatic compositions ranged from prose to sonnets to epic verse. In sheer quantity, no playwright in Western Europe has produced as much as Lope de Vega.
Lope de Vega was born in Madrid on November 25, 1562. His father was a basket maker, though many claim he was of noble heritage. At this time, nobility was not thought to be a virtue; rather, people “sought to pose as a hidalgo, and – as a corollary – avoid work.” As a child, de Vega allegedly began to compose verses before he knew how to write and, often, he would share his breakfast with those older than him in order to have them transcribe his compositions. By the age of twelve, de Vega claimed to have written his first play. However, this may be little more than a boast on his part.
At the age of ten, de Vega was sent to a local preparatory school of mediocre reputation. His disciple and first biographer, Juan Péréz de Montalván , claims that de Vega and a close friend ran away from their studies only to be captured by the police and promptly returned to Madrid. His studies brought him to the University of Salamanca where the young playwright met the woman many would call his first muse, Elena Osorio, in 1583. Elena was the daughter of Jerónimo Velázquez, an actor of some repute for whom Lope de Vega began his professional playwriting career. He began composing sonnet after sonnet for Elena as Petrarch had done for Laura 300 years before in Italy.
While he pursued the young Elena, de Vega also joined the Spanish Navy. In 1585, he met Miguel de Cervantes , and served with him in the Azores. While serving together, both young men would write in their spare time.
The romance between Lope de Vega and Elena Osorio did not last. She fell in love with the money of a younger man. De Vega circulated two poems in Madrid (one in Latin, the other in Spanish) that ridiculed and vilified Osorio and her family. On December 29, 1587, Lope de Vega was arrested in a theatre in Madrid for public libel against Osorio and Velázquez. As punishment, he was exiled from that city for eight years and banished from the entire region of Castile for two.
Lope de Vega did not take kindly to banishment, however, and after a brief stay in Valencia, he returned to Madrid in 1588. He fell in love with Isabel de Urbina, the daughter of one of King Phillip II’s personal guards. The young couple loved one another, but a warrant was quickly placed for his arrest. With nowhere else to turn, Lope de Vega jumped on board the San Juan, a battleship of Spain’s Armada. While at sea, Lope de Vega and Isabel de Urbina were married by proxy.
Montalván reports that Lope de Vega did indeed participate in the Armada’s fateful attack against the Royal Navy of Queen Elizabeth I. According to the biographer, de Vega used copies of his old verses for Elena Osorio to pack his cannons, battled Sir Francis Drake, and returning to the Spanish town of Cadiz, finished his epic poem, La Hermosura de Angélica, based on Ariosto’s epic Orlando Furioso.
After his naval service, Lope de Vega returned to his former place of exile, Valencia and continued to write in earnest for the stage. When he wasn’t writing, he was acting. According to legend, his list of affairs with other actresses are too numerous to recount. His wife Isabel died in 1596 during childbirth (only to have the child, Theodora, tragically die a few days later), and soon after Lope began to pursue a woman known as Camila Lucinda. Camila’s true identity is unknown, but the majority of Lope de Vega’s published verse after 1596 is dedicated to her.
In 1598, Lope de Vega married Juana de Guardo, the daughter of a rich pork-seller – a point about which the playwright often joked. This marriage was to be a happy one, though still fraught with de Vega’s promiscuity.
De Vega met the Duke of Sessa in 1605. The wealthy Spanish nobleman quickly became Lope de Vega’s primary patron. With the money provided by the Duke, Lope de Vega returned to Madrid for the first time since his escape with the Armada. Here in 1609, he became a member of the Spanish Inquisition. De Vega was trying to repent for his youthful escapades by working closely with the Catholic Church, and he hoped that this move would help reconcile his differences with the Madrid government, but it did neither. In fact, many were outraged that he, a layman, was part of the Inquisition, and in 1611, de Vega barely escaped an attempt on his life.
1612 marked the formation in Madrid of the Academia Selvaje, a group of writers that often met to exchange work. The two most prominent members of this group were Lope de Vega and Miguel de Cervantes, his old friend. Through this forum, Lope de Vega came to be regarded by both critics and the public as one of the most eminent writers of Spain.
This time of prosperity and success in de Vega’s life did not last long however, because in August of 1613, Juana de Guardo died. The next year, Lope de Vega was ordained as a priest in the Catholic Church.
Many ridiculed this choice of Lope de Vega’s: his life was too full of debauchery, intrigue, and rivalry, they thought, for him to dedicate his life to God. Even his old friend Cervantes was party to these attacks against de Vega’s name. But the playwright held to his decision. He stopped his correspondence with the Duke of Sessa, left the theatre as a profession, and vowed that he would, from that time on, devote his life to God.
This reformation was short-lived. In 1616, only two years later, de Vega had an affair with another woman, Marta de Nevares Santoyo. Madrid was rife with gossip, but de Vega managed to live it down through his wit, charm, and tenacity. Their affair would lead to the birth of Lope de Vega’s first son, who bore his name.
This coincides with the period in which Lope de Vega wrote most of his plays. He still had many enemies (most of them in high places), but his lyrical genius overshadowed their attacks against his name. The public honored him. It became customary to see portraits of Lope de Vega in wealthy households. The state would never confer any title to him because of his highly-placed and powerful enemies, but in the eyes of the public, he was a symbol of national pride. Between 1620 and 1622, Pédro Calderón de la Barca emerged as his dramatic successor, and in 1628, Lope de Vega retired from the stage for a second time and became the Chaplain of the Congregation of St. Peter in Madrid.
Lope de Vega, now in his late sixties, had been deified by the public. They followed him from place to place. They waited for the opportunity to speak with him. In his old age, Lope de Vega became a living legend.
But his iconic status was to dissolve by the end of his life. In 1635, Lope’s son drowned at sea. The old Lope saw his son’s death as punishment by God for the debauches of his youth. He mourned for four months, and then on the night of August 23, 1635, turned to his friend and biographer Montalván, who sat at his bedside, and told him that it was nobler to be good than to be great. With that remark, Lope de Vega rolled over, and died.
What is left of Lope de Vega is hard to say. Many of his works are lost, possibly as many as 1,000 to 1,300 of them. Copyright laws did not exist in his time, and publication gave free access for anyone to produce his work without paying royalties. The plays published during his life often came in anthologies that included verse, prose, and drama. Critics suggest that his plays, written so quickly and for the popular theatre, lack depth: they never focus on philosophical problems and, in form and structure, are very simple. Of course, this might be expected of one who writes more than 1,000 plays during his lifetime. In style and subject matter, de Vega’s plays include everything from classical myths to folklore, from foreign history to points of Spanish national pride. Any compelling story he could find was worthy of becoming a play. During his time with the Academia Selvaje, he stated that he did not believe the principles of Aristotelian and Neoclassical structure of drama to be useful: they were too limited to please the public. Lope de Vega’s dramaturgy focuses on pleasing the groundling by telling a good story. His life is reflected in his work, which is often full of adventure, love, deception, and a distant aspiration to lead a virtuous, Christian life. Lope de Vega may have never reached this virtuous lifestyle, but in his attempt, he left the world a gold mine of stories that speak of the human experiences of love and faith.