Lope de Vega

Lope de Vega

Richard III, Rustavalli Company, Georgia

Lope de Vega was a great Spanish playwright during the late 16th Century. In each of his entertaining works there were three distinct classes: The kings, the nobles, and the common people. [AL] {EP}
He wrote the first of his nearly 1,800 plays at 12, and by 25 he was an established playwright and a celebrated wit. The themes of Lope were the varied aspects of honor, human dignity, justice, and the conflict of peasant and noblemen. To hold the attention of his audiences, he kept the length of his plays relatively short, consciously ignored the classical unities, convoluted his plots to produce the unexpected, and wrote so as to be easily understood by the common people. [RA] {EP}