The new art of making comedies: summary and characteristics

Lope de Vega in 1609 he wrote one of the texts that revolutionized the theatrical and literary panorama of the Golden Age: "The new art of making comedies." In this text of only 380 verses, the author indicates the new course that, according to his poetic conception, the Spanish theater has to follow. This is how it establishes a new literary genre that moves away from the more classical and traditional conception to bet on situations closer to the people and with a more popular touch. In a PROFESSOR we want to discover you a summary and characteristics of "The new art of making comedies", the work with which Lope de Vega lays the foundations of the new 16th and 17th century theater.

The Spanish Golden AgeIt was a period characterized by a great splendor of Hispanic literature and culture. Authors such as Miguel de Cervantes, Calderón de la Barca or, of course, Lope de Vega they were key names of this time in which an excellent literary quality was reached.

Within all literary genres,

the theater lived at this time a great apogee. The reason? The production of Lope de Vega, who was in charge of commercializing this genre and making it the most popular genre in Spanish art. The comedy pens they became a perfect meeting point for the inhabitants of towns and cities where they could enjoy theatrical pieces full of humor and with everyday scenes.

Lope became the best known playwright from his time and, therefore, his importance in the artistic environment was recognized during his life. This made him consider himself as a scholar of the genre, something that made him win enemies such as the famous controversy he had with Miguel de Cervantes, the undisputed name of the novel of the Spanish Golden Age.

At 47, Lope publishes "The New Art of Making Comedies", a short work in which, as a compendium, he compiles the new bases on which the theater of the time should be created. When he publishes this text, the author already has a high regard in Hispanic literature and, in addition, he has a great theatrical production that includes more than 450 pieces.

In order to fully understand what "The New Art of Comedy" means for the history of Hispanic literature, we must stop for a moment to understand what is indicated in this text. This theatrical manifesto is nothing more than a summary of the innovations that Lope de Vega was already making on the stages of the comedy corrals. Therefore, the appearance of this book was nothing more than a consolidation in this new way of doing and understanding theater.

Next, we will offer you a summary of the decalogue proposed by Lope to write the new theater. The guidelines that it indicates and recommends following are the following:

• Thematic freedom: It is not necessary to talk about the great themes of classical theater, it is possible to deal with everyday themes that are closer to the viewer of the time in order to cause greater interest in the productions.
• Tragicomedy: another of the precepts that Lope defends is that the works are included within a new genre that Lope himself proposes author, tragicomedy, that is, the mixture of tragedy and comedy that manages to create works full of humor and criticism Social
• The 3 units of Aristotle: Lope proposes to continue with the unit of action (that is, that the entire work focuses on the same action, the same plot) but discards to comply with the units of time and place.
• Journeys: Another of the innovations that we see in "The new art of making comedies" is that it proposes to divide the work into three acts (or days) instead of the 4 days from classical theater
• Language adapted to the characters: To gain in verisimilitude, Lope bets to avoid language that is too elevated and poetic if the character is a person from the street or humble. Therefore, he defends the use of the appropriate language for each character and that, thus, be much more real and recognizable by the public
• Verse: He also defends that theatrical works should be composed in verse and, depending on the situations in which we find ourselves, we can find different types of stanza. But, be careful with this, although the works are written in verse, it does not mean that they are of elevated language, the language is adapted to the characters, as we have already pointed out.

We are now going to analyze the characteristics of "The new art of making comedies" to better understand which It was the theatrical revolution that Lope managed to carry out with his new way of writing works by theater. The first thing we have to keep in mind is that this author made a radical change in the conception of literature: he did not write for scholars or academics but he began to write for the village. Therefore, thanks to Lope, theater began to become the social genre where both aristocrats and villagers shared space in the comedy corrals.

It is also important to bear in mind that, although the theme proposed by Lope was free, the truth is that in his production we find a huge presence of honor as the central theme of his comedy. The fact of defending the honor or someone dishonoring another character could create authentic tragicomedy scenes that kept the viewer in suspense throughout the work.

The typical characters of "The new art of making comedies" by Lope de Vega

Although Lope generally wanted to shy away from character-types and bet on presenting characters more psychologically worked, it is true that in the vast majority of his works there appeared characters such as the following:

• The lady and the gallant: they were the ones who used to star in the love story
• Knight
• King
• Villain
• Servants
• Funny

The most peculiar and innovative character It was precisely the latter: the funny. It was a character created by Lope de Vega himself and that brought that more comical and carefree touch to the plot lived by the lovers. This type is where the most comical part of the work fell and, not only because of his interventions, but also because of his way of speaking and moving, he already generated a great explosion of laughter and laughter.