Lope de Vega's El Nuevo Mundo descubierto por Cristóbal Colón: Convention and Ideology

This attempt by Lope to dramatise the figure of Columbus has been the object of much critical disdain. Moratín declared it to be "una de las más disparatadas" of Lope's comedias, whilst one of the play's severest critics, Eugenio de Ochoa, even goes so far as to advise us that "analizar esta comedia sería una pérdida de tiempo." And it seems clear that Lope did indeed have major problems in dramatising the figure of Columbus and in representing his historic achievement, even with the varied range of dramatic formulae at his disposition. In this strange mélange of a play, Columbus emerges as one of the least interesting and developed of the characters. He is in fact a character with no single conventional role to fulfill, and consequently wanders onto the stage with diminishing frequency, to participate in a series of tableaux: from questionable historical reconstructions, to static, regal pageants, and even a brief allegorical auto.

Meanwhile other characters fare far better, particularly the "Indians," who flourish in the conventional dramatic environment Lope creates for them. The central dramatic motif is the struggle between two Indian leaders for the affections of the beautiful Tacuana. Dulcanquellín, the more powerful of the two pretenders, in fact has the leading part in the play. He struggles against his own pride, arrogance and brutality armed only with his undeveloped nobility, in a remarkable foreshadowing of the dilemma that will confront Segismundo. Tacuana initially demonstrates all of the "European" virtues of the classical Lopean dama: virtud, discreción, pudor, and confirms her "true" nobility by immediately acknowledging the meaning and power of the Cross. Yet, as if feeling obliged to modify his ennoblement of these erstwhile "savages," Lope reveals aspects of their primitive selves in brief but telling moments of dramatic revision.

Interestingly, those Spaniards who are developed within this increasingly conventional comedia are cast as villains. The greed, duplicity and hypocrisy of Terrazas are well established, whilst his full degeneracy is conventionally confirmed when he unleashes his illicit deseo. Yet, even so, in a complete reversal of the manner in which Lope ultimately undermines the "ennobled Indians," Terrazas eventually becomes the unlikely spokesman of doctrinal orthodoxy. At the end of the play, the rebellion provoked by the Spaniards' appalling conduct is only quelled by Lope's resorting to an absurdly abrupt deus ex machina device. And then, as a dramatic afterthought, Columbus is wheeled on for the final pageant, having been marginalised almost completely from the play's dramatic heart.