Dying for Love: Eros and Violence in Lopean Drama

Lope de Vega’s El caballero de Olmedo, El perro del hortelano, and El castigo sin venganza historically have been viewed as plays concerned primarily with questions of love and honor. It has been argued that because Lope favors theme over action, his plays generally exhibit little psychological depth and his characterization may not appear as complex or nuanced as it could otherwise be. Lope’s aim as a playwright was to entertain and please his audience by giving them dramas that were exciting and that had a high degree of verisimilitude in terms of popular language, thinking, feeling, and behavior. As such, the plays tend to relegate psychology and other less immediate aspects of human existence to a secondary plane, using them only to the extent that they lend themselves to a lively illustration of theme or action. Be that as it may, a good number of Lope’s works do reveal a metaphysical dimension and owe much of their structure and appeal to the psychological dynamics of complex love triangles. The mechanics of these triangles and the role they play in the three comedias in question constitute a promising avenue of exploration. Concepts such as Denis de Rougemont’s notion of passionate love and René Girard’s theory of mimetic desire can be used productively in a reinterpretation of these plays, thus affording new perspectives into the development of the intrigues so much at the heart of Golden Age comedias. (JS)