La moza de cántaro

anty 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

ore 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 i

ed 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, wr

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, Do?a 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 Eng

d 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 th

soldier, in the capacity of secretary. For his employer he composed about this time the pastoral romance Arcadia, which was not published until 1598. The remaining years of his banishment, which was evidently remitted in 1595, were uneventful enough, but this last year brought to him a great sorrow in the

he close of the twelfth century. Lope left the service of the Duke of Alba on his return to Madrid, or about that time, and during the next decade held similar positions under the Marqués de Malpica and the Conde de Lemos, and during a large part of this period he led a more or less vagabond existence wherever the whims of his employers or his own gallant adventures led him. About 1605 he made the acquaintance of the Duque de Sessa, who shortly afterwards became his patron and so continu

scholars ever since his time. From his works we can easily believe that both of these motives entered into it; in fact he says as much in his correspondence with the Duque de Sessa. Speaking of this phase of the poet's life, Fitzmaurice-Kelly says: "It was an ill-advised move. Ticknor, indeed, speaks of a 'Lope, no longer at an age to be deluded by his passions'; but no such Lope is known to history. While a Familiar of the Inquisition the true Lope wrote love-letters for the loose-living Duque de Sessa, till at last his confessor threatened to deny him absolution. Nor is this all: his intrigue with Marta de Navares Santoyo, wife of Roque Hernández de Ayala, was notorious." But later, speaking of those who may study these darker pages of L

nd assumed a leading r?le. Before this time he was known as a great author and worshiped by the element interested in the drama, but on both these occasions he had an opportunity to declaim his incomparable verses and those of the other contest

627 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. I

lara, 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 exce