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And then came the monster of nature, the great Lope de Vega, who took over the comic monarchy...." Thus Cervantes referred to the sweeping success of the young Lope Félix de Vega Carpio, who effectively put every other Spanish playwright out of work at the beginning of the 1580s. Of his unknown number of plays, perhaps close to a thousand, about 500 survive. They cover a wide array of topics, but most of their plots and characters develop according to a tragicomic model known as cloak-and-dagger comedy. Lope knew how to use this formula to fashion a world of endless variety, and a late masterpiece like Punishment without Vengeance (1631) counts as one of the most sophisticated puzzles in the history of drama. Apart from his plays, Lope's overwhelming output included every literary genre known to his times; although many of these works are now lost, no scholar has, to this day, attained a thorough knowledge of all that remain.

Born to commoner parents in Madrid, Lope de Vega began creating poems in his childhood, even before he could write, and was already famous in his early twenties. His education was rather haphazard, due to his untiring fondness for adventure and love affairs, and he never received the grounding in classical languages that was then the cornerstone of a literary career. Although he read extensively, he was never considered (very much to his distress) a learned man. He tried to turn soldier, but soon realized that he had no heart for it; there are doubts about whether he actually took part, as he claimed, in the Armada against England. Only in the theater was his mastery unchallenged in his lifetime, for people high and low found his dramatic art the acme of entertainment. The unquenchable demand for his plays allowed him to lead a comfortable and, for the times, quite unusual life as a professional writer. Es de Lope became a popular way to praise anything excellent.

Lope's literary career is indistinguishable from his no less vast and intense love life. As he himself acknowledged, love and verses were for him one and the same uncontrollable lust. Critics have had to pay particular attention to the echoes in his works of his many love affairs, one of which landed him in jail and then in exile-for slandering a former lover and her family. He married twice and was, rather surprisingly, a family man of sorts. Also deeply religious, he often suffered gnawing crises of guilt and remorse. A cruel fate multiplied death around him, and his elegy for his little son Carlos F�lix is one of the most moving poems in Spanish literature. Overwhelmed by the virtual extinction of his family, he became a priest in 1614. That, however, was the greatest error of his life, for he soon relapsed into his old ways and fell in love with a married neighbor, Marta de Nevares. Exquisitely beautiful, a gifted singer, and inclined to poetry, she gave him years of what would have been unmarried bliss if not for the shocking breach of his priestly vows. In the end, to his torment, Marta went blind and died deranged.

Lope de Vega was a flawed, contradictory personality. His vanity, impudence, and self-pitying paranoia were no less immense than his work. He fawned on aristocrats and royal officials but, shackled by his lowly birth and dubious moral reputation, was never accepted at court nor obtained the honors he so ardently coveted. Only in 1627 would the pope make him a knight of Saint John, an empty reward for a long poem on the martyrdom of Mary Stuart. On the other hand, Lope would tolerate no shadow on his glory. His childish craving for praise and flattery alienated many colleagues and led him to sly attacks against Cervantes and G�ngora, Spain's respective masters of the novel and of lyric poetry. As Lope's style of theater, like Shakespeare's, did not conform to the Aristotelian norms standard at the time, Cervantes dismissed his work as shallow and commercial in Don Quixote. Lope retorted that Cervantes's novels were even more unorthodox. Both men were to a certain point right and, at the same time, a bit pharisaical.

On the positive side, Lope was a cheerful friend and companion. His love for everything feminine meant that his plays are an endless catalog of charming heroines. It is no surprise that sex is treated in his works with remarkable freedom, plus a deep awareness of the innermost foibles of human passion. He did not drink nor gamble, and prized above all the peace and quiet of the little house and garden that he bought for himself early in life, which can still be seen in a side street of old Madrid. His well-known charity often caused him to return home half-naked and penniless. Unflinching in his loyalty to church and crown, he was also capable at times of stinging, detached criticism. In spite of much-laughed-at attempts to claim a fake, overwrought coat of arms, he never lost touch with the common man, and incorporated balladry and other popular literary forms into the core of his sophisticated art.

Not surprisingly, his death was mourned by the masses, but virtually ignored by the court, which vetoed the public funeral proposed by the city of Madrid. A year later a book called Fama póstuma, the first festschrift in Spanish, was published in his honor. Its patron and leading contributor was the duke of Sessa, who had employed Lope for many years in one of his preeminent capacities: the writing of love letters.

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