La moza de cántaro | Page 7

he had written eight hundred
plays in 1618, nine hundred in 1619 and one thousand and seventy in

1625. In the Égloga á Claudio, written in 1632, and in the concluding
lines of La Moza de Cántaro, revised probably the same year, he says
that he is the author of fifteen hundred comedias. In the Fama Póstuma,
written after his death in 1635 by his friend Montalvan, it is stated that
the number of dramatic works of Lope included eighteen hundred
comedias and four hundred autos. From the above figures it is evident
that Lope composed at times on an average a hundred comedias a year,
and this after he had passed his fiftieth year! Yet still more astonishing
is his own statement in regard to them:
«Y más de ciento, en horas veinte y cuatro, Pasaron de las musas al
teatro.»[4]
And it is a matter of history that he composed his well-known La
Noche de San Juan for the favorite, Olivares, in three days. This, in
addition to his other works, offers us a slight insight into the wonderful
fertility of the man's genius and gives reason to Cervantes and his
contemporaries for calling him "el monstruo de la naturaleza" and "el
Fénix de los ingenios."
[Note 3: Lope was by no means unaware of his important influence on
the Spanish theater. In his Epístola á Don Antonio de Mendoza he
evinces it in the following lines:
Necesidad y yo partiendo á medias el estado de versos mercantiles,
pusimos en estilo las Comedias. Yo las saqué de sus principios viles,
engendrando en España más Poetas, que hay en los ayres átomos
sutiles.
Obras Sueltas, vol. I, p. 285.
]
[Note 4: Obras Sueltas, Vol. IX, p. 368.]
To his plays Lope de Vega has given the general name of comedias,
which should not be confused with the word "comedies," for the two
are not synonymous. They are divided into three acts or jornadas of

somewhat variable length and admit of numerous classifications.
Broadly speaking, we may divide the comedias into four groups: (1)
Comedias de capa y espada, which Lope created and which include by
far the greater number of his important works. In these plays the
principal personages are nobles and the theme is usually questions of
love and honor. (2) Comedias heroicas, which have royalty as the
leading characters, are lofty or tragical in sentiment, and have historical
or mythological foundation. (3) Comedias de santos, which represent
some incident of biblical origin or some adventure in the lives of the
saints. In them the author presents the graver themes of religion to the
people in a popular and comprehensible manner, in which levity is
often more prominent than gravity. (4) Comedias de costumbres, in
which the chief personages are from the lower classes and of which the
language is even lascivious and the subject treated with a liberty not
encountered in other dramas of the author. To these various classes
must be added the Autos sacramentales, which were written to be
represented on occasions of religious festivals. Their theme is usually
popular, even grotesque, and the representation took place in the
streets.
Lope de Vega took the Spanish drama as he found it, and from its
better qualities he built the national drama. He knew the unities and
ignored them in his works, preferring, as he says, to give the people
what they wished, and he laid down precepts for composition, but even
these he obeyed indifferently. Always clever, he interpreted the popular
will and gratified it. He did not make the Spanish drama so much as he
permitted it to be made in and through him, and by so doing he
reconciled all classes to himself; he was as popular with the erudite as
he was with the masses, for his plays have a variety, facility, and poetic
beauty that won the favor of all. His works abound in the inaccuracies
and obscurities that characterize hasty composition and hastier
proof-reading, but these are forgotten in the clever intrigue which is the
keynote of the Spanish drama, in the infinite variety of versification
and in the constant and never flagging interest. For over fifty years
Lope de Vega enriched the Spanish drama with the wonders of his
genius, yet from El Verdadero Amante, certainly in its original form
one of his earliest plays now in existence, to Las Bizarrías de Belisa,

written the year before his death, we find a uniformity of vigor,
resourcefulness and imagination that form a lasting monument to his
versatility and powers of invention, and amply justify his titles of
"Fénix de los ingenios" and "Monstruo de la naturaleza."
III. LA MOZA DE CÁNTARO
This interesting comedia was written in the last decade of the life of
Lope de Vega, in the most fertile period