Félix Lope de Vega y Carpio (25 November 156227 August 1635) was a Spanish playwright, poet, and novelist who was a key figure in the Spanish Golden Age (1492–1659) of Baroque literature. In the literature of Spain, Lope de Vega is second to Miguel de Cervantes. Cervantes said that Lope de Vega was “The Phoenix of Wits” (Fénix de los ingenios) and “Monster of Nature” (Monstruo de naturaleza)
Lope de Vega renewed the literary lfe of Spanish theatre when it became mass culture, and with the playwrights Pedro Calderón de la Barca and Tirso de Molina defined the characteristics of Spanish Baroque theatre with great insight into the human condition. The literary production of Lope de Vega includes 3,000 sonnets, three novels, four novellas, nine epic poems, and approximately 500 stageplays.
Personally and professionally, Lope de Vega was friend to the writer Francisco de Quevedo and arch-enemy of the dramatist Juan Ruiz de Alarcón. The volume of literary works produced by Lope de Vega earned him the envy of his contempories, such as Cervantes and Luis de Góngora, and the admiration of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe for such a vast and colourful oeuvre. Lope de Vega was also a close friend of Sebastian Francisco de Medrano, founder and president of the Poetic Academy of Madrid. Lope de Vega would attend Medrano's Academy from 1616-1626, his relationship with Medrano is evident in his "El Laurel de Apolo" (1630) in silva VII.
Life
Youth
Lope de Vega Carpio was born in Madrid, in the Puerta de Guadalajara to a family of natives of the valley of Carriedo. His father, Félix de Vega, was an embroiderer. Little is known of his mother, Francisca Fernández Flores. He later took the distinguished surname of Carpio from his paternal grandmother, Catalina del Carpio.
After a brief stay in Valladolid, his father moved to Madrid in 1561, perhaps drawn by the possibilities of the new capital city. However, Lope de Vega would later affirm that his father arrived in Madrid through a love affair from which his future mother was to rescue him. Thus the writer became the fruit of this reconciliation and owed his existence to the same jealousies he would later analyze so much in his dramatic works.
The first indications of young Lope's genius became apparent in his earliest years. His friend and biographer Pérez de Montalbán stated that at the age of five he was already reading Spanish and Latin. While he was still unable to write, he would share his breakfast with the older boys in exchange for their help scribing his verses. By his tenth birthday, he was translating Latin verse. He wrote his first play when he was 12, allegedly El verdadero amante, as he would later affirm in his dedication of the work to his son Lope, although these statements are most probably exaggerations.
His great talent bore him to the school of poet and musician Vicente Espinel in Madrid, to whom he later always referred with veneration. In his fourteenth year he continued his studies in the Colegio Imperial, a Jesuit school in Madrid, from which he absconded to take part in a military expedition in Portugal. Following that escapade, he had the good fortune of being taken into the protection of the Bishop of Ávila, who recognized the lad's talent and saw him enrolled in the University of Alcalá. Following graduation, Lope had planned to follow in his patron's footsteps and join the priesthood, but those plans were dashed by falling in love and realizing that celibacy was not for him. Thus he failed to attain a bachelor's degree and made what living he could as a secretary to aristocrats or by writing plays.
In 1583 Lope enlisted in the Spanish Navy and saw action at the Battle of Ponta Delgada in the Azores, under the command of his future friend Álvaro de Bazán, 1st Marquis of Santa Cruz, to whose son he would later dedicate a play.
Following this, he returned to Madrid and began his career as a playwright in earnest. He also began a love affair with Elena Osorio (the "Filis" of his poems), who was separated from her husband, actor Cristóbal Calderón, and was the daughter of a leading theater director. When, after some five years of this torrid affair, Elena spurned Lope in favor of another suitor, his vitriolic attacks on her and her family landed him in jail for libel and, ultimately, earned him the punishment of eight years' banishment from the court and two years' exile from Castile.