Portrait of Lope de Vega (Wikipedia)
We start this series with a look at one of the most prolific authors in the Spanish language, with a life that was as evenftul and scandalous as it was productive.
It is no secret that I love Lope de Vega.
His love story with Marta de Nevares is one of my favourites in History.
He wrote some absolutely kickass roles for ladies, AND he was a hit with the ladies, having three wives, several other lovers, and FIFTEEN CHILDREN.
He might have also embroiled himself in a libel case against one of his lovers, Elena Osorio, and was accused of kidnapping his first wife, Isabel de Urbina. That might have been the reason why he enlisted in La Grande y Felicisíma Armada(we don’t use the other name here), AND SURVIVED.
He also became a priest later in his life, but that did not stop him from Writing, nope, and all of this to support his ever growing family.
He wrote circa 1800 plays, 3000 sonnets, 3 novels, 4 short stories, 9 epic poems and 3 didactic poems, aside from the Arte Nuevo de Hacer Comedias, a treaty that changed the way theatre was understood.
Among those, there’s the famous Un soneto me manda hacer Violante, which I covered in my Youtube channel a while ago:
Out in little stars 