Lope de Vega was the Spanish equivilent of William Shakespeare. He wrote (I believe) over 900 plays, mostly dramas. yet, i have never seen one of them. Is he know at all to the english stage?
he must have been pretty good…what do the critics say?
Santa Clara University put on Fuente Ovejuna last year. Unfortunately, I was unable to go. Pity, because I’ve been curious about his work since I learned of it in the course of reading Don Quixote.
They were popular in Tudor England.
Gaskell Allo allo! What’s going on here?
- Cut to beached rowing boat piled high with bundles of dirty magazines. Two Spaniards are unloading it. *
Spaniard Ees nothing, Señor, ees just some literature.
Gaskell I know what literature is, you dago dustbin. I also know what porn is. (pulls out a loose magazine and brandishes it) What’s this then eh?
Spaniard It is one of Lope De Vega’s latest play, Señor.
Gaskell ‘Toledo Tit Parade’? What sort of play’s that?
Spaniard It’s very visual, Señor.
Gaskell Right. I’m taking this lot in the name of Her Gracious Majesty Queen Elizabeth.
Spaniard Oh, but Señor.
Gaskell Don’t give me any trouble. Just pile up these baskets of filth and come with me.
- The second Spaniard leaps out of the boat with a drawn sword and they both engage Gaskell in a fight. Then we start to draw away from them, leaving them tiny dots in the distance fighting. Fight music over all this and voice over. *
Voice Over The battle raged long and hard, but as night fell Sidney overcame the Spaniards. 6,000 copies of ‘Tits and Bums’ and 4,000 copies of ‘Shower Sheila’ were seized that day. The tide of Spanish porn was stemmed. Sir Philip Sidney returned to London in triumph.
I am very familiar with Fuente Ovejuna (studied it in school during theatre history class and a play reading/analysis class), and see productions put on every now and again. I don’t really hear much about the rest of Lope de Vega’s works and have never seen a production of any of them.
Fuente is a great play though and performed way to infrequently. I am not sure why Lope de Vega hasn’t really crossed over into English all that well. I would say it was a language barrier but Moliere’s plays are performed all the time. So…I don’t know. Maybe it was just too “of it’s time” for it to be relevant to modern English speaking audiences, or it relied to heavily on Comedia tropes that didn’t get brought into modern English language plays, so it is too “different” for modern English speaking audiences? Maybe it’s a combination of the above including the addition of the language barrier making it too hard for modern English speaking audiences to relate? Hard to say.
My money would be on the comedia though. For some reason those traditions weren’t kept up in Northern Europe much past the 1800’s and modern audiences who weren’t raised on them tend to find them very off-putting for some reason. They have no problem with Opera or the Three Stooges, but Comedia del Arte always throws them for a loop. :rolleyes:
Ah well. Best not to rant I suppose.
I did a lighting design for a large student production of Fuente Ovejuna at Harvard in…1994, I believe. Since then, I have not seen a Lope de Vega play performed in the Boston area. (Not that there have been none, but I haven’t seen one advertised, and I’m pretty hooked into the scene).