Love Melancholy in La quinta de Florencia

Written at a time when many significant treatises on melancholy had just appeared in Spain and the rest of Europe, La quinta de Florencia explains the pathological behavior of its protagonist-turned-antagonist in light of humoral theory and faculty psychology. Specifically, it suggests that Cesar's rape of a peasant girl is attributable to the humoral imbalances and adustion brought on by his scholarly work and his excessive fixation upon a painting of Venus and Adonis. The intense mental exertion of these activities adversely affects his imagination and memory, two faculties upon which rational thought was believed to depend. Also contributing to his madness is the retention of excess seed, a potentially dangerous condition that was thought to bring on erotic ambitions considered socially and morally unacceptable. In choosing to explore love within the context of Renaissance theories on behavior and thought, Lope deviates from the traditions that informed his prose sources for the play: love is shown to be both an aesthetic response, arising from perceived beauty, as well as a physiological one, arising from humoral disposition and way of life.