Ferdinand is the foil to the Comander ; good male authorityBegins as war of succession to Castilian crown, in end Ferdinand usurps her authority to speak with her; monarchs plural appearance is symbolic value to resolve what Lope and ppl at his time would accept as figures of legitimate justice.Isabella won the war; forged a unity government over Iberian peninsula minus Portugal and set Spain over the course of its empire.

Laurencia is a strong character in the play; if the Comander represents

Arte nuevaGive the public what it wants, they buy the tickets

Lecture

Theatre is mimetic, imitates life; synthetic and combines artistic elements. Combination of movement, gesture, voice, masques, dialogues, interactive dialogues. Interpretative; spectators and dramatists interpret the work of art. Pre verbal; words are elaboration of dramatic action.

Theatre is temporal; period of time for it to evolve and present itself. And it cannot be repeated and it is ephemeral.

Plastic art; different art and movement, never the same thing twice.

Francis FergussonTheatre text can be read as musical notation can be read; takes practice. Cognitive

Aristotle; not a series of prescriptions, despite what the Renaissance academicians claimed, close observation of poetic arts in Greek (drama: tragedy and comedy). Art having in common the imitation; humans have histrionic quality. Separation of comedy and tragedy; Perspective vis--vis spectators and performances (heroes higher than us, hero higher than us with fatal flaw, creating fear and pity); comedy involving people lower than us, we look down at them and laugh at them. Tragedy (Chapter 6); imitation of action of certain magnitude Six elements common to drama; plot, character, theme, language, diction, music, spectacle. Unity of action; time and place. Discovery first in Italy, interpreted in Spain in 1580s;

Royal Academy of Madrid critiquing Lope and demanding that he defend his practices, and that is where arte nueve comes in.

Medieval dramatic tradition is murky and lost in Spain; few texts are fragments. Liturgical plays (auto de, but not auto sacramentales that we know); plays staged around sermons, feast days. Historionic sensibility in Aristotle put to use in religious framework, and then it evolves from it. Fragments that predate 16th century that are religious in nature. In 16th century, we see more surviving texts: Juan de Encina, court of Ferdinand and Isabella, wrote dramatic dialogues. Lyrical religious play that might be played in the court; pasos de Lope de Rueda, grandfather of entremes gender; pastoral plays, tragedies in 1580s.

Los tragicos, early in 1580s before Lope comes on scene. That aesthetic is fading in and Lope establishes the: establishment of mature, highly conventional theatre thanks to Lope and others. This coincided with establishment of first theatre (1579, corral de la Cruz; 1580, corral de la Principe).

Men in bottom floor; women sit in first floor; adjacent buildings, windows opened up like theatre boxes for people who could pay more. Autor de comedias is not the author but rather the director of plays; financial undertakings, purchasing plays from dramaturgo (playwright). Playwright not linked to any company, they sold works to whoever would buy them; after play was sold to autor, it would belong to him/company.

Plays known for special effects and machinery; sunsets, ships passing in distance, animal sacrifice in Numancia; stage a large wooden platform, behind it was a curtain, that curtain could be drawn for sudden revelations (like bloody body of Mencia spread out). No lighting effects in corales; performed in broad daylight. In court, broader budget, more complicated stage machinery (tramoyas) and light effect.In beginning of scene, there would be some reference to clothing and time and day. Lots of performances a day in the theatre; loa, recited dramatic prologue; then first act of comedias, then intermission of acts 1 and 2, an entremes would be performed. In Act 2, a summary of the action in the first speech (further); after 2nd act, jachara (sung romance with picaro, racy, underworld), baile; then 3rd act; and finally, fin de fiesta (music, dance, or jachara).

Lope fixes division of action in 3 acts; calls it comedias nuevas to distinguish it from ; each act is 1000 lines; no scene division in act, except group of people exit and others entrance that signals change of scene. Liberties are blantantly taking; aristic. Polymetric verse; use of different styles for different effects (octosyllabic works predominate; redondillas, group of 4 lines with 8 syllables for dramatic lines, abba; romances to tell stories 8 syllable lines goes to an indeterminate length, assonant rhyme ; sonnets to tell love; hendecsyllabic, 11 syllabic lines for long serious speeches; octavas-reales, royal octets (8 lines long, each line has 11 syllables), lofty serious literary tone adopted from Italianate theatre.) Verse changes exist

Plays integrate song, music, theatre, dance. Caters to taste of average music goer. In the time, the audience time were not referreed to as spectators but as oyentes (went to hear a comedy, not to see a comedy).

Its a business,

Jose Antonio Maravall, Culture of the Baroque; seminal work. Idea that Baroque culture in Spain was a mass culture, and a guided culture that served a purpose in the patriarchal hegemony of the time; escape valve and bring ppl back into the fold.

Educated men; saints lives, fuente ovejuna; ballad traditions, lyric traditons and transforms them in 3 act plays. Lope was such a master of poetry that that he would write songs that people would write