La moza de cántaro | Page 4

retirement behind the friendly walls of some monastic retreat, but rather
was it the most active period of his literary career. Well may we say
that he had no declining years, for he never knew rest or realized a
decline of his mental faculties. He did not devote by any means all his
time to his literary pursuits, but found time to attend faithfully to his
religious duties and to the cares of his home, for he had gathered about
him his children, Feliciana, Lope Félix and Antonia Clara, of whom the
last two and Marcela, in a convent since 1621, were the gifted fruit of
illicit loves. In 1627 he published his Corona Trágica, a long religious
epic written on the history of the life and fate of Mary, Queen of Scots.
This work won for him the degree of Doctor of Divinity, conferred with
other evidences of favor by Pope Urban VIII. Three years later
appeared Lope's Laurel de Apolo, a poem of some seven thousand lines
describing an imaginary festival given on Mount Helicon in April,
1628, by Apollo, at which he rewards the poets of merit. The work is
devoted to the praise of about three hundred contemporary poets. In
1632 the poet published his prose romance, Dorotea, written in the
form of drama, but not adapted to representation on the stage. It is a
very interesting work drawn from the author's youth and styled by him
as "the posthumous child of my Muse, the most beloved of my
long-protracted life."[2] It is most important for the light it sheds on the
early years of his life, for it is largely autobiographical. Another
volume, issued from the pen of Lope in 1634 under the title of Rimas
del licenciado Tomé de Burguillos, contains the mock-heroic, La
Gatomaquia, the highly humorous account of the love of two cats for a
third. Fitzmaurice-Kelly describes this poem as, "a vigorous and
brilliant travesty of the Italian epics, replenished with such gay wit as

suffices to keep it sweet for all time."
[Note 2: Égloga á Claudio, Obras Sueltas, Vol. IX, p. 367.]
Broken in health and disappointed in some of his fondest dreams, the
great poet was now rapidly approaching the end of his life. It is
believed that domestic disappointments and sorrows hastened greatly
his end. It would appear from some of his works that his son, Lope
Félix, to whom he dedicated the last volume mentioned above, was lost
at sea the same year, and that his favorite daughter, Antonia Clara,
eloped with a gallant at the court of Philip IV. Four days before his
death Lope composed his last work, El Siglo de Oro, and on August 27,
1635, after a brief serious illness, the prince of Spanish drama and one
of the world's greatest authors, Lope Félix de Vega Carpio breathed his
last in the little home in the Calle de Francos, now the Calle de
Cervantes. His funeral, with the possible exception of that of Victor
Hugo, was the greatest ever accorded to any man of letters, for it was
made the occasion of national mourning. The funeral procession on its
way to the church of San Sebastian turned aside from its course so that
the poet's daughter, Marcela, might see from her cell window in the
convent of the Descalzadas the remains of her great father on the way
to their last resting-place.
II. THE EARLY SPANISH THEATER AND THE DRAMA OF LOPE
DE VEGA
The theater of the Golden Age of Spanish letters occupies a position
unique in the history of the theaters of modern Europe, for it is
practically free from foreign influence and is largely the product of the
popular will. Like other modern theaters, however, the Spanish theater
springs directly from the Church, having its origin in the early
mysteries, in which the principal themes were incidents taken from the
lives of the saints and other events recorded in the Old and the New
Testament, and in the moralities, in which the personages were abstract
qualities of vices and virtues. These somewhat somber themes in time
failed to satisfy the popular will and gradually subjects of a more
secular nature were introduced. This innovation in England and France
was the signal for the disappearance of the sacred plays; but not so in

Spain, where they were continued several centuries, under the title of
autos, after they had disappeared in other parts of Europe.
The beginnings of the Spanish secular theater were quite humble and
most of them have been lost in the mists of time and indifference. The
recognized founder of the modern Spanish theater appeared the same
year Columbus discovered the New World. Agustín Rojas, the actor, in
his Viaje entretenido, says of this glorious year: "In 1492, Ferdinand
and