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He was a playwright and poet born Felix Lope de Vega y
Carpio during the Baroque period in Madrid, Spain where the wage earner was
Felix de Lope who was an embroiderer to trade. By the time
he was five he was able to read Latin and Spanish, by the time he as ten he
could translate verses in Latin and his first play was written when he was
twelve. When he was 14 he
entered the Colegio Imperial, but he ran away from there so that he could
go to Portugal on a military expedition. On his return the Bishop of Avila arranged his enrolment
into the University of Alcala de Henares after he had noticed his
abilities, and once he graduated his initial plans of entering the church changed
after he fell in love. He
joined the military and fought with the Navy in the Azores. Only after he left service did
he return to Madrid and concentrate on writing plays, but after being
turned away by a woman he had been having a lengthy affair with, he ended
up with a jail sentence and an eight-year exile from Castile for
libel. While in exile he was forced to
marry the 16 year old daughter of a court advisor to Philip II in 1588,
which pushed him to re-enrol in the Spanish Navy again where he would be
one of the lucky ones who made it home alive after he had seen action in
the Spanish Armada's attack on England. He moved to Valencia for the remainder of his exile and
when he became secretary to the Duke of Alba he re-located to Toledo. His wife died in 1595 and he
returned to Madrid where he would carry on where he left off with love
affairs, scandals and lawsuits, some of which are said to have been the
inspiration for a series of sonnets.
He continued with his secretarial duties, but at the same time was
in a particularly prolific period as well as at the beginning of a string
of tragedies where he lost his wife and at least three of his children over
a 20-year period. In 1598 he
wrote his first novel, Arcadia and in 1614 he joined the priesthood. One of Spain's most acclaimed
writers, and regarded as second only to Cervantes, he wrote around 2000 complete
plays and numerous other poetic and dramatic works and his 1612 Christmas
carol "Pastores a Belen" is one of Spain's most popular songs in the
holiday period and is also heard on Leroy Anderson's Suite of Carols for
String Orchestra.
Pastores a Belen recordings
Leroy Anderson
and His Orchestra
Decca B0003552-02 (CD: A Leroy Anderson Christmas)
Sources:
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lope_de_Vega
2.
http://66.218.71.231/language/translation/translatedPage.php?tt=url&text=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.biografiasyvidas.com%2Fbiografia%2Fv%2Fvega.htm&lp=es_en&.intl=us&fr=slv8-msgr
3.
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/lopevega.htm
4.
http://www.theatredatabase.com/17th_century/calderon_and_lope_de_vega.html
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