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The Case for an Early Dorotea: A Reëxamination
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
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It Is Not difficult to account for the repeated concern of lopistas with the question of the dating and the versions of La Dorotea. In order to discern Lope's intention in recasting his adventure with Elena Osorio in the unique actión en prosa form, one must first reach some conclusion regarding the stage or stages in his long career at which the work was conceived and composed. There are today few critics who consider the actión en prosa even largely a youthful work. Most see evidence throughout of the workmanship and outlook of the old Lope, not restricting this to passages of necessity late—the horoscope of Fernando-Lope's future, the discussion of a parodied culterano sonnet, the “piscatory idylls” inserted at the last minute as elegiac tributes to Marta de Nevares. And indeed it can hardly be questioned, after the perceptive studies of Vossler and Montesinos, that La Dorotea, as it appeared in 1632, reflects the maturity of its author. In no other way can we account for the special flavor of this work in which all of Lope's life and art appear in a new focus against a background of inexorably fleeting time.
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References
1 A new edition, the most extensively annotated to date, intro. by J. M. Blecua (Madrid, 1955), appeared while this article was in the process of publication, too late to be taken into account.
“ The term is borrowed from Leo Spitzer's study Die Literarisierung des Lebens in Lope's Dorotea (Bonn, 1932).
2 La Dorotea. Actión en posa de Frey Lope Felix de Vega Carpio (Madrid, 1632), facs. ed. (Madrid: Real Academia Española, 1951), p. unnumb. Subsequent references are to this edn.
3 The preface is signed by Francisco Lopez de Aguilar, but since Menéndez y Pelayo—Ideas esléticas (Madrid, 1884), ii, i, 456—has been generally assumed to be by Lope. The question of differences in dress, to which Lope alludes here, is considered below, p. 776.
4 Estudios sobre Lope (Mexico, 1951), p. 83. Referred to hereafter as ‘Montesinos.‘
5 Obras sueltas, ix, 367.
6 Ibid., i, 466. That Lope is the author is the opinion of S. G. Morley, who first drew attention to this passage in his Pseudonyms and Literary Disguises of Lope de Vega, Univ., of Calif. Publications in Mod. Philol., xxxiii (1951), 427–428. Montesinos (p. 318, n. 171) is certain it is not Lope and also shares the opinion of Ricardo Palma that the Peruvian poetess did not exist and that the epistle “huele a mistificación literaria.” On Palma, see Alberto Tauro, Amarilis Indiana (Lima, 1945), p. 19. For more on the attribution to Lope, based on a passage in La Dorotea, see below, p. 773 and n. 39.
7 Covarrubias, Tesoro de la lengua castellana (Madrid, 1611), writes s. v. tierna: “Tiemo algunas vezes sinifica el que esta apasionado.” Lope uses the word in the same sense in his “Question sobre el honor debido a la poesia,” published with the Rimas humanas in 1602, in a passage which moreover reveals something of the state of mind we have indicated above in its use of examples applicable to Lope himself (italics mine), its reference to licentious Spanish prose writings (Las Celestinas?) and to avoiding publication: “Y en razon del hablar libre, tambien creyó la antiguedad que los Dioses havian cegado al poeta Stesicoro, tan famoso, que tenia Horacio por peligroso imitalle, en castigo de haver hablado poco dignamente de la hermosura de Helena. Y Crinito refiere la libertad de los Poetas Griegos Cratino y Aristophanes, con la queja que los Metelos tuvieron del Poeta Nevio, castigado en la tared par maldiciente. No tienen ahora essos estilos los libros, ni las censuras dellos los permiten escandalosos; de mas que por la parte de ser tiernos, la prosa suele hartas veces hurtar a la Poesia sus licencias, como en Heliodoro, Apuleyo, y muchos de los moder-nos. A esto se parecian algo los Españoles antiguos, assi en los encarecimientos atrevidos como en las virtudes poco honestas … Solo me parece que los disculpa no las haver ini-presso con su gusto. …” (Obras sneltas, iv, 516—517).
8 El desdichado por la honra, in Obras suellas, viii, 219.
9 Fernando's remark: “Algun ingenio sagrado dixo, que la lengua del amor es barbara para quien no le tiene” (fol. 134r) refers to Sonnet xx of the Rimas sacras (Obras sudtas, xiii, 185); see Montesinos, p. 254, n. 33. N.B. In addition to the two scenes of parody of the cultos (iv.ii-iii) appear scattered references to cidleranismo, evidently late, though no allusions to individual poets or tags from their works. See below, p. 778 and n. 51.
10 Montesinos, pp. 281–282.
11 Obras poéticas, ed. Foulché Delbosc (New York, 1921), i, 107. Another reference to Góngora in a later scene (fol. 143r)—“Dixo don Luis de Gongora de las calles de Madrid que eran lodoscon peregil y yerua buena” is to a sonnet of 1588: “Grandes más que elefantes y que habadas” (ed. cit., i, 106). These incidental allusions appear to be to Góngora's early production, with no reference to cidteranismo.
12 See J. M. Hill, “A Petition and Some Verse of Lifian de Riaza,” Revue hispanique, LXXXI (ii, 1933), 123–127, where the ballad—“Al soto del Manzanares”—is quoted. Celia rounds out her ridiculing of the Manzanares with a tag of verse unidentified as to author but probably also from a romance of this period: “Pero mas satirico el otro Poeta que dixo por el mismo [sc. rio] ‘Que no son Alamos todos / Los que en el agua se ven’. ” Montesinos (p. 143 and n. 40) also notes a reminiscence of a seguidilla del Guadalquivir in the passage under discussion (fol. 53v).
13 The romance here mentioned has not survived, so far as I know.
14 Rliythmas de Lidz de Camões (Lisbon, 1595), fol. 3v: “Busque amor nouas artes, nouo engenho …” The number of sonnets and lyrics in subsequent editions of Camoëns (1595, 1598, 1616) grew rapidly. The fact that no poems which had not appeared by 1595 are alluded to in La Dorotea may therefore be significant.
15 Obras sueltas, i, 77–78.
16 See Poesias de Francisco de Figueroa, ed. Angel González Palencia (Madrid: Bibliófilos espafioles, 1943). Figueroa's verse, as much as escaped his order that it be destroyed at his death (1617?), was published only in 1625.
17 Diogo Bemardes, Rimas varias. Flores do Lima (Lisbon, 1596). (Lope seems always to have written ‘Bernaldes.‘)
18 Rhythmas, fol. 3r: “N'hum jardim adornado de verdura …” Her name is contained in a Petrarchan anagram at the end, when Cupid, asked to choose the most beautiful among three flowers, replies: “Todas fermosas, sao, mas eu queria, / Viol'antes que lirio, nem que rosa.” In his Vida e obras de Luiz de Camões, tr. Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcelos (Lisbon, 1598), i, 292, Wilhelm Storck doubts that Violante is to be identified with Da. Violante de Noronha, Countess of Linhares, to whose son Camoëns is said to have been a tutor. The other sonnet in which Violante appears, “A violeta mas bela que amanhece …,” was not published until 1668. See Obras de Luiz de Camões, ed. Hernani Cidade (Lisbon, 1946), i, 188. The 2 compositions of Camoëns alluded to in the next paragraph of our text are on foil. 16v and 152v of the 1595 Rhythmas, respectively.
19 See Luis de Camoëns, Poesias castellanas y autos, ed. Marqués Braga (Lisbon, 1929)‘ p. 27, and Francisco Asenjo Barbieri, Cancionero Musical de los siglos XV y XVI (Madrid’ n.d.), pp. 66–67.
20 Montesinos, pp. 254–255 and n. 33. The sonnets are discussed in n. 33; the romance mentioned in our next sentence, in the text.
21 The estribillo quoted by Gerarda figures, with slight variants, in the ballad “Ardiendo se estaua Troya,” No. 7 in the Romancero de Barcelona, Revue hispanique, xxix (1931), 124, a collection which Montesinos links with the court of Alba de Tormes at the time of Lope's sojourn. On the possible allusion to Juan Bias de Castro, see Montesinos, p. 254, n. 31. On Juan Bias, Rafael Mitjana, “Comentario … al Cancionero., del siglo XVII, recogido por Claudio de la Sablonara …,” RFE, vi (1919), 248–250. The closeness of Lope's friendship for Juan Bias during the Alba period—he figures as Brasildo in La Arcadia and is praised elsewhere in La Dorolea (fol. 270r)—is attested in Lope's heartfelt “Elogio,” written on his death in 1631 (Obras sueltas, ix, 385–388).
22 See Romancero general (1600,1604,1605), ed. Angel Gonzalez Palencia (Madrid, 1947), ii, 62, the letrilla beginning: “Galeritas de Espafia, / parad los remos, / para que descanse / mi amado preso.”
23 Obras sueltas, vi, 134–135 and 191–192. Subsequent page references are to this ed. of La Arcadia.
24 One recalls Lope's claim that he wrote La hermosura de Angelica, pub. 1602, in 1588 on board a ship of the Armada, and merely added a few finishing touches later. Without sharing Rudolph Schevill's doubt (“Lope de Vega and the Year 1588,” BR, ix [1941], 70) that any part of the work was written before 1588, we note that Rennert and Castro (Vida, pp. 61, 101, 149) find internal evidence of three stages of composition: before 1589, 1590–95, ca. 1602. An allusion to this poem in La Dorolea which immediately follows the reference to the House of Alba noted above—“Mas a proposito era para mis hombros débiles vn sujeto amoroso, como la hermosura de Angelica” (fol. 132v)—may also therefore date from a period when Lope was at work on the still unpublished poem.
25 The ballad quoted is “Mil alios ha que no canto …,” probably written in 1591 (Poesias líricas, ed. Montesinos, Madrid, 1925, i, 95 and 97, n. 1; and the ballad Lope alludes to, “El tronco de ovas vestido …,” ibid., p. 66).
26 “Persistence and Change in the Formation of La Dorotea,” HR, xviii (1950), 203 ff.
27 Lope de Vega y su tiempo, 2nd ed. (Madrid, 1940), p. 170.
23 J. P. Wickersham Crawford long ago pointed out that much of the learned material in the final book of La Arcadia is lifted from the 15th-century Vision Delectable of Alfonso de la Torre and wholly archaic. See “The Seven Liberal Arts in Lope de Vega's Arcadia,” MLN, xxx (1915), 13–14.
29 For this story, see A. Rodríguez Villa, “Don Francisco de Mendoza,” Horn, a Menéndez Pelayo, n, 496 ff.; and María Goyri de Menéndez Pidal, “La Celia de Lope de Vega,” NRFH, iv (19S0), 353–357.
30 The introductory description of the rival in La Arcadia, which reads like a denunciation, offers a good example of how Lope has injected his own emotions into this tale written for another: “Era rico como ignorante y presuntuoso como rico, atrevido como grosero, y venturoso como indigno” (p. 6). There is evident here a wish to show partiality toward Amphryso-Duke Antonio. But this bitterness has deeper psychological roots in Lope's own resentment of Francisco Perrenot de Granvela, his successful rival for the favors of Elena Osorio.
31 For the encounter of the feminine rivals in La Arcadia, see pp. 315–316. Cf. the exchanges between Marfisa and Dorotea in La Dorotea, the comedia passages noted by Morby, op. cit., p. 207, and, in the ballad “Aquel moro enamorado …,” a highly dramatic quarrel at the Granada court between Abindaraja-Elena and Galiana over Adulce-Lope. (Romancero general, ed. cit., i, 44. On Lope's authorship, see Mille, “Apuntes para una bibliografia …,” RH, lxxix (1928), 368.)
A propos of the lover's indiscretions, only in La Arcadia and La Dorotea is there the special refinement of revelations to the heroine's own rival. Cf. the heroines' similar laments in La Arcadia, pp. 285–286 and La Dorotea, (foil. 141v-142r).
For overt allusions in La Arcadia, through the minor figure of Belardo, to Lope's disillusioned feelings, see pp. 87–91, 357, 444, and Montesinos, 169–170.
32 Lope's description of the prose of La Arcadia in the prologue to the Rimas humanas (Obras suellas, iv, 165). It should not be overlooked, however, that even in La Arcadia Lope's prose sometimes loses its elevated artistry and acquires a lively colloquial movement that shows he is ripe for cultivating a more naturalistic type of dialogue: “Leonisa … le preguntó a Alcino, que si dormia, asiendole dos o tres veces del pellico, a quien Alcino, ex-tendiendo Ios brazos, dixo: ”Durmiera, sino me recordáras. ¿Pesate mucho, dixo Belisarda? ¿Como me puede pesar, respondio Alcino, tocandome tus manos, llamandome tu boca, y abriendo yo los ojos para verte …? Harto bien se disculpa, dixo Leonisa, para estar ahora tan dormido …“ (pp. 110–111).
33 Citations and imitations of La Celestina in other works of Lope, particularly comedias, have been pointed out from all stages of his career. At least 5 such reminiscences in comedias of the 1590's show the impression already made on him at that time by La Celestina. The comedias, as dated by Morley and Bruerton, are: El maestro de danzar (1594), El galán escarmentado (1596–98), La francesilla (1595–98), El rufián Caslrucho (ca. 1598), La bella mal maridada (before Sept. 1598). For details of these and other reminiscences, see Monte-sinos, 112–114; J. Oliver Asín, “Más reminiscencias de La Celestina en el teatro de Lope,” RFE, xv (1928), 66–74; Aida Croce, La “Dorolea” di Lope de Vega (Bari, 1940), pp. 141 and 156.
34 Two indumentary details concerning calcas pointed out in a private letter by Miss Ruth Lee Kennedy help to support our impression of the earliness of this and a subsequent scene. (See below, p. 775.) Gerarda's offhand remark here, “Si fuera persona de calças atacadas …” (fol. 228r), would appear to reflect a time before 1622 when this garment was discontinued by decree. That it could have been written much earlier is indicated by a reference elsewhere to the calças largas worn by the young Fernando. (This is in his account to the disguised Dorotea of the course of their love, Act rv, sc. i, fol. 167r.) In Las ferias de Madrid, a play dated before 1S96 and probably 1585–89 by Morley and Bruerton, Lope emphasizes that these long breeches are beginning to compete in favor with the calcas atacadas (knee breeches). (See Acad. N., v, 583b, 599b.)—I am much indebted to Miss Kennedy for drawing my attention to indumentary details in La Dorotea.
35 See A. Tomillo and C. Perez Pastor, Proceso de Lope de Vega (Madrid, 1901), p. 70, for the arrangement with Jerónimo Velazquez. On pp. 17–18, a witness summarizes one of the lost satirical poems as accusing Elena's father, mother and brother of acting as procurers for her. For similar accusations in a surviving sonnet, see J. de Entrambasaguas, “Los famosos ‘libelos contra unos cómicos’ de Lope de Vega,” Bol. de la Acad, de Bellas Arles de Valladolid, iii (1933), 490.
36 Dorotea's father is dead: Teodora threatens her “por el siglo de tu padre” (fol. 8V). Her husband plays no more part than did Elena's. There are, however, 2 allusions to other relatives—one by Dorotea: “Esto merecia mi verdad? … Esto lo que he padecido con mi madré y deudos?” (fol. 58v); one by Fernando: “… tanta competencia de competidores y deudos …” (fol. 170v). Are these incongruous references to pressures of which nothing else is said unconscious slips showing that Lope is still under the impression of the real events as he writes?
37 Is it perhaps to counteract this depiction of Teodora that Lope has Fernando surprisingly remark, in the last act: “De Teodora su madre, no quiero quexarme, pues solo fue culpada en la permission, pero las otras en la solicitud” (fol. 240r)?
38 One of them even adds: “Algunas veces antes que las dichas sátiras saliessen, oyó este testigo decir a el dicho Lope de Vega: ‘mi madre Santa Inés’, diciendolo por la muger de Velazquez y por la madre de la dicha Elena Osorio” (Proceso, p. 42).
39 The form of comic irony present in this passage, where the role of a martyred saint cloaks dubious activities, closely parallels that which we assumed to be present in the passage of the canción “Amarilis a Belardo” quoted above, p. 757.
40 See Montesinos, pp. 241–243.
41 Text in a MS. published by John M. Hill, Indiana Univ. Studies, No. 60 (Dec. 1923), p. 81. See also Montesinos, p. 320, n. on p. 238.
42 A detail of which use is made 4 times is the fact that Dorotea's house has entrances on 2 different streets. Cf. a reference in the Proceso to the house of J. Velazquez in Lavapies, “cuyas espaldas dan a la calle de la Comadre” (p. 148). In the ballad “¿De cuándo acá tantos fieros?” Zaida is told: “Diga cuál llama su calle / para no pasar por ella, / que como es cantón su casa / a dos calles señorea” (quoted in Proceso, pp. 106–108).
The realistic touches in La Dorotea even include a household dog, Roldán, who roams the streets at night (fol. 135V). He is usually brought in but once he keeps Fernando company in the snow all night under Dorotea's window, causing him to write to her: “O si me vieras mejor que suelo pintarme en los versos! Pastor cubierto de nieue, con el ganado de mis pensamientos, y el perro al lado!” (fol. 25Sr). Cf. the pastoral ballad “,;Cuándo cesarán las iras?” where Belardo says: “Estas piedras son testigos / de que, cubierto de nieve / me hallo mil veces el sol / antes que el tuyo saliese” (Poesias liricas, i, 72).
43 “Pasamanos escarchados” (fol. 63v), Fernando's “capita vntada con oro” (fol. 4V), Don Bela's similarly decorated one (fol. 35r), probably also the “abaninos de cadeneta” (fol. 257v). Covarrubias writes s.v. “cadeneta”: “Cierta labor o randa que se haze con la aguja; cosa prolixa, pero muy estimada.” Sempere y Guarinos, Eistoria del luxo (Madrid, 1788), ii, 75, quotes a text of 1592 which deplores the “perdimiento de tiempo que estos aftos atrás corría por el mundo con las cadenetas, que con obra de hilo sacaban el oro, y la plata.” Sempere's work, pp. 80–118, and Ruth Lee Kennedy, “Certain Phases of the Sumptuary Decrees of 1623 …,” BR, x (1942), 91–115, may be consulted for further information on the decrees referred to above.
44 Lope's statement in the prologue (p. 756 above) drawing attention to the great changes in dress between the 1580's and 1632 may be intended to ward off objections to the luxuri-ousness of the dress mentioned in La Dorotea. A comment of Sempere, incidentally, support's Lope's affirmation: “Si se compara el luxo de este reynado [Philip IV's] con el de los anteriores, estuvo mas moderado … El trage espanol quedó reducido a la mayor sencillez y aun mezquindad …” (pp. 120–121).
45 Miss Croce speaks of “un paziente lavoro di intarsio” and remarks: “Supporre che da un lavorio di questo genere, estrinseco e freddo, sia potuto nascere un'opera unitaria di inspirazione e di tono, è impossibile” (p. 77).
46 W. L. Fichter and F. Sánchez y Escribano, “The Origin and Character of Lope de Vega's ‘A mis soledades voy.‘,” HR, xi (1943), 304–313, show how the meditative ballad of La Dorotea may have grown out of a much earlier one, “Agora bueluo a templaros” (Romancero general, ed. cit., i, 92). The structural pattern of the 2 ballads is similar but social criticism is much milder in the second and specific biographical references are eliminated.
47 For the first of these possibly personal references, see Amezúa, Lope de Vega en sus cartas (Madrid, 1935), i, 397–399. For the second and third, Rennert and Castro, Vida, pp. 52 and 45, respectively. An additional passage probably dating from the 17th century is Gerarda's remark “Ya se van oluidando … las danças antiguas, co estas acciones gesticulares, y mouimientos lasciuos de las Chaconas, en tata ofesa de la virtud de la castidad, y el decoroso silecio de las damas. Ay de ti Alemana, y Pie de Gibao, q tãtos afios estuuistes horando los saraos …” (fol. 40r). Cotarelo, Colección de enlremeses, loas … (Madrid, 1911), t. i, i, ccxl ff., finds the first known reference to the chaconne in 1599. In the early 17th century its displacing of the stately older dances is frequently deplored by moralists (whose language the sanctimonious Gerarda humorously adopts here).
It is possible that Clara's scornful reference to the adoption of women's modes by men (“Nos hurtan del trage … nuestros aliños, nuestros rizos, nuestros moldes, y nuestros espejos. …” [fol. 38r]) belongs to the years around 1620 when the effeminacy of men was much satirized (suggestion of Miss Ruth Lee Kennedy). On the other hand, as far back as 1592, one finds a moralist quoted by Sempere (p. 25) railing against this practice.
48 These scattered references to culleranismo pertain to vocabulary, imagery, obscurity of meaning. 1. Vocabulary: While some of the “vocablos exquisitos” which the characters of La Dorolea prize—technical literary terms, e.g., like “hipérboles y energias” and “hemistiquios” (fol. 45v)—could well belong to an earlier pattern of Literarisierung, antedating culleranismo, others like “morigerado” (fol. 39v) and “abstracto” (fol. 81v) are words which Lope definitely considered culterano affectations. (These 2 are in the list in the “Epistola a Angulo,” Obras sueltas, I, 425.) Other cultismos are indicated in a speech of Gerarda to Bela: “Ya se te ha pegado lo crespo de la lengua, pocion, natiua, afecta y morbida.” (fol. 117r). In another passage, to be dated 1632 since it comments on an elegy for Marta de Nevares, the language of the poem is called “de lo mas crespo” and the comment is made: “Leuantan agora los nueuos terminos a la lengua” (fol. 156r). Both observations are disputed by Fernando. 2. Imagery: “calçar Soles.” On Bela's first visit to Dorotea, he flatters her small feet: “… Ni se ha de calçar en tienda pie que lo auia de estar del Sol.” Laurencio comments: “He aqui el Sol con suelas, que hermoso desatino” (fol. 78v). That the cultos are being mocked here is made plain in the later commentary on the sonnet: “Los cultos deste tiempo sabrán mucho de calças porque todo es calçar eslrellas, calçar flores, nubes, noches, Soles …” (fol. 204v). 3. Obscurity of meaning: Ironically enough, Fernando goes culto to cap his revenge. He sends Dorotea “un papel con mas tinieblas q los versos de Licofronte, para que le leyesse y no le entediesse; como la Poesia destos tiempos, que los que la escriuen son los que menos la entienden” (fol. 247v).
49 Both passages have received attention from critics. See esp. Wm. C. Atkinson, “La Dorotea, acción en prosa,” BSS, XII (1935), 200–201, and Francisco A. de Icaza, Lope de Vega, sus amores y sus odios (Segovia, n.d.), pp. 116–122. Icaza (p. 118) is the authority for the date of the marriage given in our next paragraph.
60 Lope speaks of the bridegroom as “el Code de Melgar hijo del gran Almirante de Castilla don Luis Enriquez de Cabrera” (fol. 247v). He seems to have had grounds for speaking flatteringly at this time of don Luis (d. 1596) as well as of the Colonnas. Much later, in his dedication of El Laurel de Apolo (1630) to the grandson of don Luis, son of the Count of Melgar of La Dorotea, he speaks of “la esclavitud debida y heredada por mis padres a la inmortal memoria del senor Almirante Don Luis, avuelo de V. Excelencia” (Obras suéltas, I, xxii).
51 Filipe Segundo, Key de Espa ña (Madrid, 1877), iii, 230.
52 “Graues Poetas son los desta edad; pero mas querra ellos imprimir sus obras, que ilustrar las agenas. Diego de Mendoça, Vicente Espinel, Marco Antonio de la Vega, Pedro Lainez, el Doctor Garay, Fernando de Herrera, los dos Lupercios, don Luis de Gongora, Luis Galuez Montaluo, el Marques de Auñon, el de Montes Claros, el Duque de Francauila, el Canonigo Tarraga, el Marques de Peñafiel, que tanta gracia tuuo para los versos Castellanos, como se ve en aquellas endechas,
En tiempo de agrauios
De que siruen quexas,
Que pues no ay orejas,
Para que son labios?
Francisco de Figueroa, y Fernando de Herrera, que entrarnbos han merecido nobres de diuinos, Pedro Padilla, el Doctor Campuzano, Lopez Maldonado, Miguel Ceruantes, el Iurado Rofos, el Doctor Soto, don Alonso de Ercilla, Liñan de Riaza, don Luis de Vargas Manrique, don Francisco de la Cueua, y el Licenciado Berrio, y este Lope de Vega que comiença agora“ (foil. 18Sv-186r). On this list, see Montesinos, p. 83 ff. The quotation from the Marqués de Peñafiel begins a poem in redondillas which may be read in the MS. published by Hill cited above (n. 41), p. 94.
53 Icaza, pp. 120–122, considers, in our opinion erroneously, that the list dates from 1587.
54 The undated pamphlet is reprinted in Fernando de Herrera. Controversia sobre sus anolaciones a las Obras de Garcilaso de la Vega … (Seville: Bibliófilos andaluces, 1870). On the episode, see also Adolphe Coster, Fernando de Herrera (el Divine) (Paris, 1908), pp. 155–175.
55 See L.-P. Thomas, Le lyrisme et la préciosité cultistes en Espagne, Beihefte zur ZRPH, xvni (Halle, 1909), 147. A version of the sonnet is found in a letter of Lope to the Duke of Sessa dated by Amezúa “July-August 1631?” (IV, 514).
56 Lope brings it up in the “Papel sobre la nueva poesia” (ca. 1617), addressed to him supposedly by “un Señor destos Reynos,” possibly the Duke of Sessa (Obras sueltas, iv, 459). Herrera's wish, in his own words (Conlroversia, p. 77), was to “ilustrar y poner en lugar deuido la dignidad, hermosura y ecelencia de nuestra lengua y comparar con los versos de Garcilaso los de los escritores mas celebrados de la antigiiedad.”
57 References in Coster, pp. 1 and 186–187, and also praise in Lope's Introduction to the Justa Poética honoring San Isidro (1621), Obras sueltas, xi, 358.
58 Icaza's observation (p. 120) on Ludovico's remark: “Podría escribirse esto después del comentario de Garcilaso por poeta de la altura de Herrera? Evidentemente, no.” is hard to understand, for Icaza holds La Dorolea written in 1586–88, certainly not before 1580.
59 The report was not approved by the Council of Castile until 1600, although the theatres reopened under its terms in 1599. See Cotarelo, Bibliografia de las Conlroversias sobre la Licitud del Teatro en Espaila (Madrid, 1904), pp. 18–20, 163–164, 207–209; and Rennert and Castro, Vida, p. 125.
60 Poesias liricas, i, 79, end of “De una recia calentura. …” Our next quotation is the beginning of a ballad on p. 91.
61 Obras sueltas, vi, 451–452. See also Montesinos, p. 170.
62 The theme of the ravage of beauty by time is developed implacably in La Arcadia in the lyric “Ya mis ruegos oyeron …” (p. 129) where the poet jeers at a once-loved Lydia “ya por sola vejez aborrecida.” “Tu bella boca y dientes …,” he tells her, are “carbon las perlas / y el coral ceniza” and he bluntly concludes: “El tiempo afea.”
63 Entrambasaguas, p. 490.
64 For the same strain in Belardo el furioso and comparison with La Dorotea, see Morby, p. 211.
65 For this and other aspects of Liter arisierung, see Spitzer's study, cited above (n. 1), passim.
68 Entrambasaguas, p. 489.
57 In some Moorish ballads, the vengeance is still only an anticipation, e.g., “Las riberas del Xenil,” probably Lope's, where Muza warns Zaida of the day when “estando yo libre / aficionada te vea, / donde me enfaden tus glorias / y me burle de tus penas” (Romancero general, ed. cit., I, 761). In others, viz. “Aquel moro enamorado …” (above, n. 31), it is an accomplished fact. Pertinent pastoral ballads are “Al pie de un roble escarchado …” (Poesias liricas, I, 69) and “Contemplando estaba Filis” (ibid., p. 93). The 2 comedias in which the autobiographical material is significantly used offer no comparable situations. Here the nature of the form opposed a painful or non-definitive ending; personal material had to be developed to suit the taste of a popular audience. Hence the outcome is an uncomplicated reconciliation (Belardo el furioso) or the Elena figure is demoted to the level of a crude courtesan who has never felt love for the Lope figure (La prueba de los amigos).
68 The versions are those found in La hermosura de Angelica (1602), El peregrino en su patria (1604), and La Filoména (1621). See Morby, pp. 115–121, 198–200.
69 Poesias liricas, i, 74, 83,95. For the love-hate paradox in Lope's theatre, see Ameztia, ii, 607–608.
70 “Este traidor instrumente) …” The ballad dates undoubtedly from the exile (p. 86 n.). Professor W. L. Fichter has drawn my attention to the line “Mi prosa y verso te ensalzan.” Is it to be taken literally? If so, it could allude to an early Dorotea.
71 For a consideration of the love-treatise aspect of the work, however, see Aida Croce, p.60ff.
72 Lope's pains to connect the story with an experience of his own lead us to question the suggestion of Aida Croce (p. 17, n. 1) that because La Dorotea centers on the passion of love, Lope might have thought it unbecoming to present it as a product of his later years and therefore have created a legend of an earlier version. It would have been simpler to keep silent about the work's autobiographical roots.
73 Acad., v, lxii-lxv.
74 Morby, p. 115.
75 See “A Vtt-Dorotea in El Isidro,” HR, xxi (1953), 145–146.
76 See his “Lope, figura del donaire” (Estudios sobre Lope, pp. 71–89).
77 José Maria de Cossío in a note in RFE, xviii (1931), 164, quotes these words from a note on Canto x of Faria e Sousa's Lusiadas comenlados (Madrid, 1639).
78 “Canta pájaro amante en la enramada …” (fol. lllv), is found in Si no vieran las mujerest, Acad., xv, 169b, dated 1631–32 by Morley and Bruerton.
79 Nise lastimosa and Nise laureada (1577). See Menéndez y Pelayo, Horacio en España (Madrid, n.d.), pp. 220–226, 276–277.
80 Quoted in La Barrera, Nueva biografía, Acad., I, 459. This passage has been drawn to my attention by Prof. W. L. Fichter.
81 In a passage of the prologue, Lope links the moral claimed for La Dorotea with those of comedies of Plautus and Terence: “Para el justo exemplo la fatiga de todos en la diuersidad de sus pensamientos; porq conozcan los que aman con el apetito, y no con la razon, que fin tiene la vanidad de sus deleites, y la vilissima ocupacion de sus engaflos. Lo que résulta dellos, dixeron lepidissimamente Plauto en su Mercader, y Terencio en el Eunuco; porque quantos escriuen de amor, ensenan como se ha de huir, no como se ha de imitar.” The examples are extraordinary. Far from teaching “how love is to be shunned,” Plautus's Merchant and Terence's Eunuch are gay pictures of triumphant profligacy. In each a sensual youth who “loves with appetite and not with reason” carries the day with no shadow of censure from the playwright. Lope's reference to these plays is intentionally equivocal. It is the figura del donaire speaking soito voce to those who could read between the lines and promising them something quite different from the lofty moral lesson proclaimed in the prologue.