HE FOUGHT DRAKE

Taranaki Daily News, 16 November 1935, Page 19 (Supplement)

HE FOUGHT DRAKE

PLAYS OF CLOAK AND SWORD. THREE CENTURIES OF FAME. Three centuries ago last August died Lope Felix de Vega Carpio, known to fame as Lope de Vega, popular dramatist of Spain. He had an exciting life. He sailed with the Armada against England apd was secretary to the Duke of Alva, but in the end he settled down, gave most of his income to charity, and allowed himself a little garden and a few books as his only luxuries. He early began writing plays and poems, and his ballads won him fame. One long poem is a rejoicing over the death of Drake, the dragon enemy of Spain. But it was as a playwright that he was most successful, for he had the wit to see' that the audience did not wind in the slightest whether the action of the play took place within 24 hours or whether any or all the rules of classical drama were broken. Originator of the “cloak and sword” plays, he gave them romance and thrills and tension instead of character studies, arid the public approved. His dialogue was easy and brilliant and his output enormous. Cervantes criticised his work severely, but he continued to give people what they wanted, and 19 years after Cervantes went to his grave almost unmourned de Vega’s coffin was followed along the same street by the greatestthrong Madrid had ever known. Of his 1500 plays about 450 remain, enough to place him as an important figure in Spanish literature.