Authors and plays in the Spanish Golden Age

It is considered that the 16th and 17th is the Spanish Golden Age, a time when there was a great splendor in the Hispanic letters due to the great authors that emerged in this period as well as the enormous diffusion that the language became due to the discovery of America. During this century, Spain was one of the most powerful nations in the world and, therefore, this century was baptized with the nickname of "Gold". In this lesson from a TEACHER we are going to discover who are the authors and plays in the Spanish Golden Age more outstanding so that you know better the literary creation of this stage.

Index

1. Brief introduction to the literature of the Spanish Golden Age
2. Juan de Encina and Lope de Rueda: the creators of Spanish theater
3. Lope de Vega, one of the main authors of the Spanish Golden Age
4. Tirso de Molina
5. Calderón de la Barca, another of the most important Golden Age playwrights

Before going into talking about authors and plays in the Spanish Golden Age, it is important that we make a stop along the way to better understand what the XVI meant for the letters Hispanic. And it is that from the 16th to the 17th we witnessed a flowering of the arts, especially in the field of literature and painting. This was due to the emergence of new voices that gave a new direction to the artistic trends of the moment and that managed to position Spain as a benchmark nation for artistic creation, leaving Italy in a second place.

Historically, the Golden Age coincides with the time of the Habsburgsand the year 1492 is considered as the starting date, since this was the year in which Christopher Columbus he discovered America and when the Muslim conquest was ended when Granada fell thanks to the Reconquest. The end of the Spanish Golden Age is marked by the date on which Calderón de la Barca died, that is, in 1681.

Literature was one of the main arts that underwent the enormous revolution of the Golden Age and it is that such famous authors as Miguel de Cervantes emerged at this time. But, of all literary genres, the theater was also one of the most successful because a creative genius like him was Lope de Vega He managed to give a new direction to the representations of popular art that took place in the streets and squares.

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To talk about Spanish theater in the Golden AgeIt is important to mention two of the main names of this literary revolution: Juan de Encina and Lope de Rueda since, thanks to them, it was possible to create the new direction of the theater and get it to be modernized and updated.

Juan de Encina (1468 - 1529)

This author is considered the creator of the Spanish theater. He is a playwright who worked for the Dukes of Alba, being in charge of writing comedies designed for the festivities of this house of the Spanish aristocracy. We are in a period in which the Castilian language is still in the process of creation and, therefore, this author wrote his pieces in the Asturian-Leonese dialect. The "Eclogue of Plácida and Vitoriano" It is considered his great masterpiece, a work of pastoral inspiration and with clear references to the creation of the poet Virgilio.

Lope de Rueda (1510 - 1656)

Another of the great names that emerged at the beginning of the Golden Age was Lope de Rueda, a great playwright who wrote comedies, as well as hors d'oeuvres and farces. In addition to being a playwright, Rueda also worked as an actor and director of his own creations. He is the person who he helped the theater become a profession and professionals could earn a living from it. He created a theater company with which he toured the country both in distinguished stages and in more popular areas.

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But we cannot talk about the authors and plays in the Spanish Golden Age without mentioning one of the most important and revolutionary playwrights that we find in our history: Lope de Vega. He is one of the most internationally recognized authors for his important contributions in the field of theater and, also, for his extensive literary work.

Lope appeared on the theatrical ground when it was already part of the daily life of cities and towns. We must not forget that it was in the Golden Age when the theater became the "literature of the people" and the productions were shown in comedy pens, the first theaters to be built in Spain.

The importance of Lope de Vega in the theatrical genre was brutal: renewed its forms in full with the publication of "The new art of making comedies", a text that came to be a compendium of the new rules and regulations that the comedies that were generated during the time had to follow. Breaking with some classical rules of the theater, Lope opted for pieces much closer to the general public, with situations of entanglement and with the genre of tragicomedy as the example follow, continue.

The result was the creation of the New Comedy, a new way of doing theater that was extremely successful and that made the Spanish theater acquire a very notable importance. Some most outstanding works of Lope de VegaThey are:

• Sourceovejuna
• The dog in the manger
• The Knight of Olmedo
• The silly lady
• Peribáñez and the Commander of Ocaña

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Another of the great names of playwrights of the Golden Age was Tirso de Molina (1579 - 1648) or, rather, Fray Gabriel Téllez since this was his authentic name. He was an outstanding Baroque writer who, above all, stood out thanks to his theatrical production. He was student of Lope de Vega when he was teaching at the University of Alcalá de Henares.

I know became a priest and, it was at this point in his life that he began to write a large number of plays that ranged between satire and comedy. Due to his fresh and funny language, Tirso de Molina encountered some problems with the religious authorities that even led him to exile several times.

One of the most outstanding and well-known works of him is, without a doubt, "The Trickster of Seville" but it has many more like, for example, "Don Gil of the green leggings" or "The nymph of the sky". But the first of all is the one that has gone down in history and the one that has made this author one of the essentials in Hispanic literature.

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And we finish this summary with the most outstanding authors and plays in the Spanish Golden Age to talk, now, about another of the essential names in our literature: Calderón de la Barca (1600-1681). He was an author who was created within the aesthetics of the Spanish Baroque and, today, he remains one of the most important theatrical authors in our history.

He was a writer, poet, and also a military man. In fact, during a period of his life, he dropped out of school to continue his military career. With Calderón we attended the culmination of the theatrical revolution which was started by Lope de Vega. This author achieved a more refined style and created a type of theater that was much more poetic and spectacular with a great presence of music and careful scenography.

Unlike Lope's theater, Calderón opts for a more dramatic and deeper type of writing. Delve into the characters, in his psychological profile and in his emotions to create a greater empathy with the public. It's about a more intellectual theater and that it has a clear objective: to instruct and educate the public. Therefore, it goes beyond the mere entertainment of Lope's works. The language is higher and more refined and, in his works, the monologues that show us the psychology of the character acquire great importance.

Some most important plays of Calderón de la Barca are:

• The life is dream
• The mayor of Zalamea
• The goblin lady
• The great theater of the world

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