Abstract

This article is a new interpretation of the Epistle of Amarilis to Belardo. Using a close reading of text and a detailed analysis of the text’s sources, we discover that it is more than just a complaint from one of Lope’s female admirers, finding that the letter by Amarilis, in the tradition of El Inca Garcilaso, is the Peruvian mestizo’s cry (Amarilis) for «another» homeland ­—«Spain», as symbolized by Lope.

Abstract

The success of Spiritual Literature in Golden Age, especifically St Augustine prays and his autobiography Confessions, are used by Lope de Vega to reflect the official position of the Catholic Counter-Reformation. The Sacramental play shows these rethoric aspirations and Lope, in order to teach and make the audience feel like he did with Sacred Rimes, uses images and Augustinian themes to get it.

Abstract

In spite of many relevant contributions to the Baroque court drama that collect data, gather information and trace the peculiar code of this dramatic genre, numerous critical essays within the sphere of Anglo-Saxon Postmodernism ignore certain aspects of the historical and cultural contextualization of this dramatic genre. In particular, these essays reveal a political interpretation of the myths and a conviction that the tragic genre is compatible with the court feast that are questionable. In accordance with theatrical semiotics, the present work tries to synthesize the main aspects that characterize the court drama as a very peculiar artistic work with specific rules, considering that we have to interpret it within the communicative circuit of the court as the place where it is produced and performed. The court dramas of Lope and Calderón, expressions of two different theatrical visions, allow us to define the code of the Spanish Baroque court drama within its two fundamental stages of development.

Abstract

The figure of the king’s favorite reappears in the Spanish political scene in the beginning of the seventeenth century. Lope, Tirso, Calderón, and other Spanish Golden Age playwrights portrayed these favorites, modeling them after the duke of Lerma and the count duke of Olivares. Lope and Calderón wrote sacramental plays in which they presented Man as the favorite of the King/God, deifying the subject of Man’s redemption that was condemned by his sins. The playwrights criticised some aspects of the powerful ministers’ policies in Las bodas entre el Alma y el Amor divino, and El Nuevo palacio del Retiro.

Abstract

En las relaciones entre hombres y mujeres, muy a menudo conflictivas, el significado y las implicaciones de un bofetón cambian radicalmente según quién es la víctima del golpe. Con muy pocas excepciones, los ejemplos espigados (El laberinto de amor de Cervantes; Del mal, lo menos, El primero Benavides, La fuerza lastimosa, El duque de Viseo, Las ferias de Madrid, Los locos de Valencia, Por la puente, Juana y El perro del hortelano de Lope; El condenado por desconfiado, Doña Beatriz de Silva, El amor médico, La celosa de sí misma de Tirso; Las manos blancas no ofenden de Calderón) no hacen sino confirmar que un lance violento, aunque sea el de un mero bofetón, pertenece al mundo masculino, y que puede atañer al comportamiento femenino tan solo en el mundo al revés de la risa carnavalesca, siendo los celos amorosos o el gratuito disparate festivo los pretextos dramáticos para que las manos blancas puedan soltar una bofetada más bien dada.