Two Notes for Lope de Vega's El villano en su rincón

Two Notes for Lope de Vega's El villano en su rincón J. R. Andrews, S. G. Armistead, and J. H. Silverman University of California, Los Angeles 1. In recent years the date of composition assigned to El villano en su rincón has fluctuated between 1611 and 1616. Montesinos has preferred a date closer to 1611 because of similar poetic material in the play and in Lope's Los pastores de Beleño Morley and Bruerton list 1611-1616, but accept Montesinos' evidence for 1611.2 Bataillon has argued for a date between February 1614 and October 1615,on the basis of internal evidence concerning the royal marriages arranged between 1612 and 1615.3 Entrambasaguas has recently claimed that Ei! vifano en su rincón was probably written during the first part of 1616, because of its close connection to El galán de la Membrillo, completed on April 20, 1615.4 Finally, Casalduero has attempted to relate a line from Góngora 's Polifemo to some verses of El villano. This relationship suggested to him that the play could not have been written before the end of 1612 or the beginning of 1613.5 There is, however, another shred of evidence which may serve to narrow even more the gap between 1611 and 1616,though unfortunately it can work at chronological cross-purposes. Vv. 213-214 of El villano en su rincón Riyendo se va un arroyo, sus guijas parecen dientes. . . are, with one minor variant, the initial verses of Lope's own Idilio segundo, published in his Rimas Sacras (Madrid, 1614).6 In addition, a secular, substantially different version of this ballad, though including the same opening lines, with possible biographical references to Lope and Micaela Lujan through their poetic names of Belardo and Lucinda, was later printed in the Primavera y flor de los mejores romances , collected by Pedro Arias López (Madrid, 1621). In his exemplary edition of this work (Valencia, 1954), Montesinos noted that in all likelihood the ballad was Lope's (p. XXIX),7 but he did not remember that its catchy introduction had appeared in El villano en su rincón. Thus, two possibilities for narrowing the date limits of El villano present themselves on the basis of vv. 213-214. The first possibility is that the contents of the ballad published by Arias Pérez indicate an estrangement between Lope and Micaela, perhaps an end to their passionate involvement. It is generally believed that their liaison might have ended around 1611.8 In that case the presence of the ballad lines in El villano en su rincón, combined with the relationship between El villano and Los pastores de Belén (Madrid, 1612), point to an early date, namely 1611, as the most likely. The second possibility concerns the publication of Lope's Rimas Sacras in 1614, with a privilegio dated August 23, 1613. One can argue that the Rimas Sacras offered in Lope's Idilio segundo a version a lo divino of what was already a well-known ballad. Is it not likely, then, that the allusion to the poem in El villano was a tribute that Lope was paying to himself, to the popularity of his ballad in its secular form, soon to be published (or already published) in a religious version?9 If this is a possible assumption then the combination of these details and those offered by Bataillon and Casalduero argue forcefully for a date between 1613 and 1615. But we must await the study in which Noël Salomon will offer further proof that the date of El villano en su rincón falls between 33 1614 and 1615.10 2. When the King meets Lisarda for the first time, he asks:¿ Sois hija deste buen viejo que llaman Juan Labrador? Her answer is Yo soy su hija, señor, y aunque tosca, fui su espejo. (w. 840-843) This reply has offered no problem to the various editors of the play.11 Only E. Correa Calderón and F. Lázaro considered it necessaiy to define "su espejo " and, in their edition (SalamancaMadrid , 1961), gave as a clarifying equivalent the phrase "su viva...