In the following chapter, I will understand ‘myth’ as a story that was thought to have been composed either for an allegorical purpose, or as a fantastic elaboration of a historical event. This genre of mythological storytelling was defined by Pérez de Moya in his highly influential work, Philosofía secreta, as ‘una habla que con palabras de admiración significa algún secreto natural, o cuento de historia, como la fábula que dice ser Venus de la espuma del mar engendrada’. This understanding was long and venerable: for example, the myth of Apollo and Daphne was explained in the medieval Ovide moralise as being an explanation for the abundance of laurels around the banks of the River Peneus (Daphne’s father): Apollo’s warmth, mixed with the water, caused the profusion of trees. In an alternative explanation, the Ovide moralise suggests that Daphne may have been a historical individual who rejected numerous suitors and died whilst attempting to avoid being raped, and was subsequently buried under a laurel. Other, more moral, meanings could be spun off the core: virgins should be pure in mind as well as body, for example; or a remarkably ingenious allegory of the Incarnation could be extracted from Ovid’s verses.

Early modern Spanish society was soused in mythology, in the ancient lore of Greece and Rome. That backward glance provided a touchstone of reference and a means of structuring stories. The field of reference or knowledge took in history as well as myth, of course: stories of Nero as well as Aeneas, Alexander the Great as well as Achilles, the blind Athenagorus of Cyrene as well as Cupid. And it will be to the uncertain division between myth and history that we shall return, although first I intend to consider the manner in which Classical mythology and history are used in what would seem, at first sight, relatively infertile territory for their harvest: a history play, set during the beginning of the fifteenth century in Spain, against a background of nobiliary unrest, oppressionof religious minorities, schism in the Church, an unseemly and unworthy king, and the sphinx-like character of his favourite, Álvaro de Luna: Lope’s El Caballero de Olmedo.