M. S.
West Virginia University.
INTRODUCTION
I. LIFE OF LOPE DE VEGA
The family of Lope de Vega Carpio was one of high rank, if not noble, and had a manor house in the mountain regions of northwestern Spain. Of his parents we know nothing more than the scanty mention the poet has given them in his works. It would seem that they lived a while at least in Madrid, where the future prince of Spanish dramatists was born, November 25, 1562. Of his childhood and early youth we have no definite knowledge, but it appears that his parents died when he was very young and that he lived some time with his uncle, Don Miguel del Carpio.
From his own utterances and those of his friend and biographer, Montalvan, we know that genius developed early with him and that he dictated verses to his schoolmates before he was able to write. In school he was particularly brilliant and showed remarkable aptitude in the study of Latin, rhetoric, and literature. These school days were interrupted once by a truant flight to the north of Spain, but at Astorga, near the ancestral estate of Vega, Lope, weary of the hardships of travel, turned back to Madrid.
Soon after he left the Colegio de los Teatinos, at about the age of fourteen, Lope entered the service of Don Jerónimo Manrique, Bishop of Ávila, who took so great an interest in him that he sent him to the famous University of Alcalá de Henares, where he seems to have spent from his sixteenth to his twentieth year and on leaving to have received his bachelor's degree. The next five years of his life are shrouded in considerable obscurity. It was formerly believed, as related by Montalvan, that he returned from the University of Alcalá to Madrid about 1582, was married and, after a duel with a nobleman, was obliged to flee to Valencia, where he remained until he enlisted in the Invincible Armada in 1588, but recent research [1] has proved the case to be quite otherwise. It would seem that, on leaving the University about 1582, he became Secretary to the Marqués de las Navas and that for four or five years he led in Madrid a dissolute life, writing verses and frequenting the society of actors and of other young degenerates like himself and enjoying the favor of a young woman, Elena Osorio, whom he addressed in numberless poems as "Filis" and whom he calls "Dorotea" in his dramatic romance of the same name. In the latter work he relates shamelessly and with evident respect for truth of detail many of his adventures of the period, which, as Ticknor says, "do him little credit as a young man of honor and a cavalier."
In the light of the recent information cited above, we know also that Lope's career immediately after 1587 was quite different from what his contemporary Montalvan had led the world long to believe. In the Proceso de Lope de Vega por libelos contra unos Cómicos, it is shown that the poet, having broken with "Filis," circulated slanderous verses written against her father, Jerónimo Velázquez, and his family. The author was tried and sentenced to two years' banishment from Castile and eight more from within five leagues of the city of Madrid. He began his exile in Valencia, but soon disobeyed the decree of banishment, which carried with it the penalty of death if broken, and entered Castile secretly to marry, early in 1588, Doña Isabel de Urbina, a young woman of good family in the capital. Accompanied by his young wife, he doubtless went on directly to Lisbon, where he left her and enlisted in the Invincible Armada, which sailed from that port, May 29, 1588. During the expedition, according to his own account, Lope fought bravely against the English and the Dutch, using, as he says, his poems written to "Filis" for gun-wads, and yet found time to write a work of eleven thousand verses entitled la Hermosura de Angélica. The disastrous expedition returned to Cadiz in December, and Lope made his way back to the city of his exile, Valencia, where he was joined by his wife. There they lived happily for some time, the poet gaining their livelihood by writing and selling plays, which up to that time he had written for his own amusement and given to the theatrical managers.
Of the early literary efforts of Lope de Vega, such as have come down to us are evidently but a small part, but from them we know something of the breadth of his genius. In childhood even he wrote voluminously, and one of his plays, El Verdadero Amante, which we have of this early period, was written at the age of twelve, but was probably rewritten later in the author's life. He wrote also many ballads, not a few of which have been preserved, and we know that, at the time of his banishment, he was perhaps the most popular poet of the day.