Prolific playwright, pioneer of Spanish drama, author of as many as 1800 comedias and several hundred shorter dramatic pieces, of which about 500 have been printed. Lope de Vega's achievement is considered among Spanish writers second only to that of Cervantes. His life was as dramatic as his plays: he was a volunteer on the Invincible Armada; his many love affairs brought him both notoriety and problems with the law, resulting in prison terms and exile.

Dorotea. . . . Alas, unhappy woman that I am—this friendship of ours offends heaven, my family, reputation, and relations. My mother harries me, friends reproch, neighbors gossip, the envious preach at me, poverty has me at my wit's end. Fernando barely has the wherewithal to buy his fine apparel. When he looks at the other women dressed in all their finery they must seen more attractive, since ornament and elegance dd to beauty and high esteem, while a woman's shabbiness day after day only sets the eyes to wandering. Variety brings novelty and incites desire. This intimacy cannot last forever, and since nothing is more public than a love affair, though lovers never think so, it is bound to end disastrously for life or honor, and, more ominously, for the soul as well.  (from La Dorotea by Lope de Vega, Act 1, Scene 3, translated and edited by Alan S. Trueblood and Edwin Honing, Harvard University Press, 1985, p. 17)

Félix Lope de Vega y Carpio was born in Madrid. His parents were not wealthy and came from the mountain region of Santander, in northern Spain. Already as a child Lope showed literary talent, composing his first verses before he could use a pen. At the age of ten he started to translate poems from Latin. At twelve Lope wrote his first play.

Lope was educatyed by the Jesuits in Madrid, and after studying at the University of Alcalá, he joined the army in 1583. He then returned to Madrid, becoming the leader of the literary circles. Around this time he formed a liaison with Elena Osorio, the married daughter of an actor and leading theatre manager, Jerónimo Velásquez. She was the inspiration of Lope's early writings, the "Filis," for whom he wrote a number of verses. When Elena started to favour a younger suitor, she became the object of his hatred. Lope was eventually expelled from Castile for two years.

In 1588 Lope married Isabela de Urbina from Madrid. Her aristocratic family had opposed the marriage with the lowborn Lope. A few weeks after the wedding, Lope joined the Invincible Armada. During this period he wrote La hermosura de Angélica, which had as its model Ariosto's Orlando Furioso.

Upon the defeat of Spain, Lope returned home penniless. He settled with Isabela in Valencia, a lively city, where he began to work seriously for the stage. From the mid-1580s, his plays had been performed in Madrid  but now he sent there new works every two months. In 1590 he entered the service of the Duke of Alba, and remained in Toledo until 1595. Isabella died in the spring of that year, and Lope went to Madrid, where he was prosecuted  for an illicit relationship with Antonia Trillo. He also wrote sonnets to Lucinda, a literary pseudonym for Micaela de Luján, a mysterious beauty, who was his mistress from approximately 1598 to 1608.

Lope married in 1598 Doña Juana de Guardo, daughter of a wealthy butcher. When was appointed secretary to the Marqués de Malpica and Marques de Sarría, his social position improved considerably. In the following years Lope divided his time between Seville, where Micaela and their children lived, and Madrid. His fame as a dramatist had been established by the turn of the century. In 1598 Lope gained fame as a ballad writer with the pastoral romance La Arcadia, However, he was soon forgotten by his public, after Philip II closed the Madrid theaters in mourning for the death of his daughter. Lope became in 1605 friends with the Duke of Sessa and his confidential secretary.

In 1610 Lope bought a house on the Calle de Francos (Street of the Franks), where he lived until his death. The street was renamed Calle de Cervantes in the nineteenth century; Cervantes was buried in the Trinitarian Monastery on what was then the Calle de Cantarranas (Street of the Singing Frogs), and now known as the Calle de Lope de Vega. Doña Juana died in 1613 while giving birth to a daughter, Feliciana. All her jewels were pawned; no valuables were mentioned in her last will and testament.  In 1614 Lope entered a religious order and was appointed an officer of the Inquisition. "Harmony is pure love, for love is complete agreement," Lope said in Fuenteovejuna (c. 1613). Lope's plays did not always find the approval of the church, but he wrote many of his comedias during his priesthood. Pope Urban VIII, however, idolized him and made him Knight of Malta and doctor of theology in 1627.

Lope's success overshadowed Cervantes's attempts as a playwright. "No one is so stupid as to admire Miguel de Cervantes," he once said. (quoted in 'The Enigma of Shakespeare' (1964), Selected Non-fictions by Jorge Luis Borges, edited by Eliot Weinberger, Viking, 1999, p. 470) In spite of his popularity, supporters in the nobility, and productivity, Lope was troubled by financial problems.

After an affair with Jerónima de Burgos, Lope fell in love with a married woman, Doña Marta de Nevares Santoyo, called "Amarilis" and "Leonarda" – this time his indiscretions with her were criticized even by Cervantes, who referred to his rival in his prologue to the Second Part of Don Quixote: "Nor am I insensible of his calling me envious, and describing me as an ignorant. What envy may be, I vow seriously that, of those two sorts that are, I skill not but of that holy, noble, and ingenious envy, which being so as it is, I have no meaning to abuse any priest, especially if he hath annexed unto him the title of Familiar of the Inquisition: and if he said so, as it seems by this second author that he did, he is utterly deceived ; for I adore his wit, admire his works and his continual virtuous employment." (The History of the Valorous & Witty Knight-Errant Don Quixote of the Mancha, translated by Thomas Shelton, Macmillan and Co., 1900, p. 186) The underlying sarcastic meaning of the phrase "la occupación contínua y virtuosa" was understood by those who knew Lope's life.

Lope's last great love, Amarilis, was stricken with blindness and insanity; she died in 1632. His son Lope Félix drowned off the coast of Venezuela in 1612, and his daughter, Antonia Clare, was abducted by a courtier. Lope turned more and more to religious contemplation and exercises, scourging himself so furiously that he bloodied the walls of his room. He died in Madrid on August 26, 1635, more or less a pauper. "Lope was not true to his better nature," summarized Helen S. Conant in A Primer of Spanish Literature (1878), "and it was natural that as his mind weakened with years his judgment should grow distorted, and his soul upbraid itself with false living. . . . He sat in the council of the Inquisition, and was actually present as presiding officer at the burning of a poor priest, who, being of Hebrew descent, had been hated by the Church, and finally declared a heretic."  (Ibid., Harper & Brothers, 128)

Most of Lope's large income was devoted to charity and the church. His state funeral lasted for nine days. On being assured on his deathbed that the end was very near, he said: "All right, then, I'll say it. Dante makes me sick." (Shadow Box: An Amateur in the Ring by George Plimpton, Little, Brown and Company, 2016, p. 283) These were his last words. Lope's fanatic devotees recited a mock creed, which said: "I believe in Lope de Vega Almighty, poet of Heaven and Earth." It became so commonplace, that the Inquisition decided to officially stop it. (Lope de Vega on Spanish Screens, 1935–2020: The Shadow of the Phoenix by Philip Allen, Lexinton Books, 2022, p. 1)

Lope claimed to have written a total of 1500 plays. His productivity was phenomenal: he boasted that he had numerous times composed a piece and brought it on the stage within 24 hours. Calderon often borrowed his plots. Essentially he wrote two types of drama, of which the cloak-and-dagger plays depicted contemporary manners and intrigue, and historical plays based on national legends or stories. The themes for his works Lope chose easily, according to the taste of his audience. On several occasions he dealt with love and honour. Some of his works were based on his own chaotic love life, among them La Dorotea (1632). It could be called a novel in dialogue. The author himself tells us that Dorotea is written in prose, that being a surer vehicle of truth to life than verse, when characters are speaking. Lope called it an "action in prose" (accién en prosa), it was the play he most wished to be remembered by. ('Introduction,' La Dorotea, 1985, p. xi)

El niño inocente de La Guardia was applauded because of its anti-Semitic theme. Lope defended in this propaganda piece the Inquisition, which regarded Judaism a major threat to the Christian world. The inquisitor passed Jerusalén conquistada, there was nothing heretic in it, but it took four years for it to be published. El divino africano was confiscated for its "indicent arguments".

In La hermosa Ester, based on the book of Esther, the Jews are not the evil-doers; Lope ends the play in happy celebration. El Remedio en la Desdicha and Pedro Carbonero portrayed Moors sympathetically, in accordance with popular sentiment. In Fuenteovejuna, Peribázez, and El mejor alcalde, el rey common people and the king are on the same side against a corrupt feudal nobility. Fuenteovejuna, depicting a peasant uprising, was performed with great acclaim in the 1990s.

La Dragontea (1598), a historical epic, was directed against Sir Francis Drake, the English hero who defeated the Spanish Armada in 1588. Among Lope's heroic plays based on Spanish legends and chronicles were El último godo, dealing with Rodrigo, Las almenas de Toro, about El Cid, and El bastardo Mudarra, about the legend of the seven infantes of Lara. The same tale by the Italian Matteo Bandello, that inspired Castelvines y Monteses, provided Shakespeare with the plot of Romeo and Juliet, though Lope's version ends happily. Thomas Holcroft utilized  El padre engañado in his Father Outwitted (1805). Various critics have denied through decades that La Estrella de Seville was written by Lope de Vega, but according to Ford Madox Ford, "[f]rom the purely literary standpoint it would seem rather obvious that the pen that wrote the picaresque scenes of the Dorotea could also have given us the—in effect romantic—episodes of the Estrella." (from The March of the Literature: From Confucius' Day to Our Own, Dalkey Archive Press, 1998, p. 674)

Lope's output included also pastoral romances, verse histories of recent events, verse biographies of saints, prose tales, and poems. Lope himself did not actively supervise the publication of his works until 1617 in Parte IX of his comedias. Many of his plays were printed and sold at the door of the theatre soon after the performance. Don Nicolas Antonio gave in 1684 the contents of 25 volumes of the author's plays, printed originally in Madrid between the years 1611 and 1630. When Spain's literary Golden Age was over, Lope's works faded from the public consciousness. Only The Star of Seville still held its place on the stage. A collection of Lope's non-dramatic works in verse and prose published from 1776 to 1779 filled 21 volumes; it did not sell well and the editor did not continue with the publication of the dramatic works. Mujeres y criados (Women and menservants), a lost comedy, was discovered in 2014 on a shelve of the National Library in Madrid. The copy was handwritten by Pedro de Valdés.

Some of Lope's essential ideas were elaborated in El Arte nuevo de hacer comedias (1609), a poetical essay, which was originally published in the Rimas of Lope de Vega. The principal characters for comedia nueva were defined as violation of the Aristotelian unities (unity of action, time, and place). Lope's recommendations were expressed in a practical way: "The subject once chosen, write in  prose, and divide the matter into three acts of time, seeing to it, if possible, that in each one the space of the day be not broken." (The New Art of Writing Plays by Lope de Vega, translated by William T. Brewster with an introduction by Brander Matthews, Dramatic Museum of Columbia University, 1914, p. 31) Knowing what appeals to the public, he stated: "Tragedy mixed with comedy and Terence with Seneca, tho it be like another minotaur of Pasiphae, will render one part grave, the other ridiculous; for this variety causes much delight." (Ibid., p. 30) And with a deep knowledge of the psychology of the audience, he adviced: "Very seldom should the stage remain without someone speaking, because the crowd becomes restless in these intervals". (Ibid., p. 32)

For further reading: Some Account of the Lives and Writings of Lope Felix de Vega Carpio and Guillen de Castro, Vol. II by Henry Richard Lord Holland (1817); Lope de Vega: Monster of Nature by Angel Flores (1930); Life of Lope De Vega by Hugo A. Rennert (1968); Lope De Vega and Spanish Drama by Kelly Fitzmaurice (1970); Lope De Vega: El Cabaillero De Olmedo by J.W. Sage (1974); The Honor Plays of Lope De Vega by Donald R., Larson (1977); Boccaccios Novelle in the Theater of Lope De Vega by Nancy L D'Antuono (1983); Visions of the New World in the Drama of Lope De Vega by Robert M. Shannon (1989); Refiguring the Hero: From Peasant to Noble in Lope De Vega and Calderon by Dian Fox (1991); Lope De Vega: El Arte Nuevo De Hacer 'Novellas' by Carmen R. Rabell (1992); Feminism and the Honor Plays of Lope De Vega by Yvonne Yarbro-Bejarano (1994); Cancionero Teatral De Lope De Vega by Jose M. Alin (1997); The Re-creation of History in the Fernando and Isabel Plays of Lope de Vega by Delys Ostlund (1997); The Beautiful Woman in the Theater of Lope De Vega: Ideology and Mythology of Female Beauty in Seventeenth-Century Spain by Marlene K. Smith (1998); A Companion to Lope de Vega by Alexander Samson and Jonathan Thacker (2008); Lope de Vega on Spanish Screens The Shadow of the Phoenix by Philip Allen (2022); Space, Drama, and Empire: Mapping the Past in Lope de Vega's Comedia by Javier Lorenzo (2023)

Selected bibliography.

Collected works:

• Las Comedias, 1604-1645? (29 vols.)
• Fiestas del Santíssimo Sacramento, 1644
• Colección de las obras sueltas: así en prosa como en verso, 1776-79 (21 vols., edited by F. Cerdá y Rico)
• Colección escogida de obras no dramáticas de frey Lope Félix de Vega Carpio, 1856
• Obras, 1890-1913 (edited by M. Menéndez y Pelayo; rev. ed. 13 vols., by E. Cotarelo y Mori, 1916-30)
• Poesía Lírica, 1926
• Poemas: El Isidro. La Filomena. La Andrómeda. La Circe. La rosa blanca. La gatomaquia, 1935 (edited by Luis Guarner)
• Epistolario de Lope de Vega Carpio, 1935-43 (4 vols., edited by Agustín González de Amezúa)
• Obras escogidas de Lope Félix de Vega Carpio, 1946-55 (edited by F.C. Sainz de Robles)
• Lope De Vega Cartas Completas, 1948 (2 vols., edited by Ángel Rosenblatt)
• Obras completas de Lope de Vega, 1965 (edited by Joaquin De Entrambasaguas)
• Comedias de Lope de Vega, 1997- (published by Milenio-Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona)
• Teatro, 2000 (edited by Guillermo de Torre)
• Obras selectas, 2003 (foreword by Miguel García-Posada)

Fiction:

• La Arcadia, 1598
• El peregrino en su patria, 1604 - The Pilgrim, or The Stranger in His Own Country (tr. 1738)
• Pastores de Belén: Prosas y versos divinos, 1612
• La Dorotea: accion en prosa, 1632 - La Dorotea (translated by Alan S. Trueblood and Edwin Honig, 1985)

Verse:

• La Dragontea, 1598
• Isidro: poema castellano, 1599
• La hermosura de Angélica, 1602
• Rimas, 1604
• Jerusalen conquistada, epopeya trágica, 1609 (3 vols., ed. Joaquín de Entrambasaguas, 1951-54)
• Rimas sacras, 1614 - Sacred Rhymes, in Desire’s Experience Transformed: a Representative Anthology of Lope de Vega’s Lyric Poetry (translated by Carl W. Cobb, 1991)
• Triunfo de la fe en los reinos del Japón, 1618
• La Circe con otras rimas y prosas, 1624
• Romancero espiritual, 1624
• Triunfos divinos, con otras rimas, 1625
• La Corona trágicaA, 1627
• Laurel de Apolo, con otras rimas, 1630
• Amarilis: égloga, 1633
• Rimas humanas y divinas del licenciado Tomé de Burguillos, 1634 - Rhymes Human and Divine of the Licentiate Tomé de Burguillos, in Desire’s Experience Transformed: a Representative Anthology of Lope de Vega’s Lyric Poetry (translated by Carl W. Cobb, 1991)
• 'La Gatomaquia, 1634
• Filis: égloga, 1635 - Moorish and Pastoral Ballads, in Desire’s Experience Transformed: a Representative Anthology of Lope de Vega’s Lyric Poetry (translated by Carl W. Cobb, 1991)
• Últimos amores, 1867
• Sonetos, 1960 (edited by Manuel José Arce)

Plays:

• Los locos de Valencia, 1590-1595 - Madness in Valencia (translated by David Johnston, 1998)
• Los comendadores de Córdoba, 1596-1598
• El testimonio vengad, 1596-1603
• Arauco domado, 1598-1603 - The Conquest of Araucania, in Translations of the American Plays of Lope de Vega (translated by Kenneth A. Stackhouse, 2003)
• El Nuevo Mundo descubierto por Cristóbal Colón, 1598-1603 - The Discovery of the New World by Christopher Columbus (translated by Frieda Fligelman, 1950) / The New World Discovered by Christopher Columbus (translated by Robert M. Shannon, 1994) / The Discovery of the New World, in Translations of the American Plays of Lope de Vega (translated by Kenneth A. Stackhouse, 2003)
• La corona merecida, 1603
• Castelvines y Monteses, 1603 - Castelvines y Monteses, Tragi-Comedia (translated by F. W. Cosens, 1869)
• La Desdichada Estefanía, 1604
• El anzuelo de Fenisa, 1604-1606 - El anzuelo de Fenisa = Fenisa’s Hook, or, Fenisa the Hooker (translated by David M. Gitlitz, 1988)
• La noche toledana, 1605
• El niño inocente de La Guardia, 1605
• El gran duque de Moscovia, y emperador perseguido, 1606
• Los melindres de Belisa, 1606-1608
• Lo fingido verdadero, 1608 - Acting is Believing (translated by Michael D. McGaha, 1986) / The Great Pretenders (translated by David Johnston, 1992)
• Peribáñez y el Comendador de Ocaña, 1610? - Peribañez and the Comendador of Ocaña (translated by Jill Booty, 1961; Walter Starkie, 1964; J.M. Lloyd, 1990; Tanya Ronder, 2003)
• La buena guarda, 1610
• La hermosa Ester, 1610
• El divino africano, 1960
  
• La niña de plata, 1610-1612
• El villano en su rincón, 1611 - The King and the Farmer (tr. 1948)
• La fianza satisfecha, ?1612-1615? (attributed to Lope de Vega) - A Bond Honoured (adaptation by John Osborne, 1966)
• Fuenteovejuna, 1612-1614 - Fuente Ovejuna (in Four Plays, 1936) / All Citizens Are Soldiers (tr. Ruth Fainlight and Alan Sillitoe, 1969) / Fuenteovejuna (translated by Adrian Mitchell, 1989; Victor Dixon, 1989; Stanley Appelbaum, 2002; G.J. Racz, 2010) / Fuente Ovejuna (translated by Gwynne Edwards, 1991) - Liekehtivä kylä (suom.)
• La dama boba, 1613 - The Lady Nit-Wit (tr. 1958) / The Lady Nit-Wit (translated by William Oliver, 1995) / Wit's End (adaptation by Edward H. Friedman, 2000)
• El perro del hortelano, 1613-1615 - The Gardener's Dog (translated by W.H.H. Chambers, in The Drama, Vol. 6, ed. Alfred Bates, 1903; John Garrrett Underhill, in Four Plays, 1936) / The Dog in the Manger (translated by Jill Booty, in Five Plays, 1961; Victor Dixon, 1990) - Puutarhurin koira (suom.)
• Don Lope de Cardona, 1618 - The Young Admirall (translated by James Shirley, 1637)
• El mayordomo de la duquesa de Amalfi, 1618 - The Duchess of Amalfi’s Steward (translated by Cynthia Rodriguez-Badendyck, 1985)
• La Gallarda Toledana, 1620 - The Incomparable Doña Ana (translated by Harvey Erdman, 1991)
• El mejor alcalde, el rey, 1620-1623 - The King, The Greatest Alcaldearte (translated by John Garrett Underhill, 1918) / The King the Greatest Alcalde (in Four Plays, 1936)
• Lo cierto por lo dudoso, 1620-1624 - A Certainty for a Doubt (translated by John Garrett Underhill, 1936)
• El caballero de Olmedo, 1620-1625? - The Knight From Olmedo (translated by Jill Booty, 1961; Gwynne Edwards, 1991) / The Knight of Olmedo (translated by Willard F. King, 1972) /  The Gentleman from Olmedo (translated by David Johnston, 1992)
• Los Tellos de Meneses, 1620-1628
• La Estrella de Sevilla, 1623 - The Star of Seville (translated by Fanny Kemble, 1837; Elizabeth C. Hullihen, 1955; Steven Strange, 1998) / The Star of Castille (tr. 1950) 
• El mejor mozo de España: tragicomedia famosa, 1625 - The Best Boy in Spain (translated by David Gitlitz, 1999)
• El Brasil restituido, 1625 - Brazil Restored, in Translations of the American Plays of Lope de Vega (translated by Kenneth A. Stackhouse, 2003)
• La moza de cántaro, 1627
• El guante de doña Blanca, 1630-1635
• La noche de San Juan, 1631
• El castigo sin venganza, 1631 - Justice Without Revenge (translated by Jill Booty, in Five Plays, ed. by R.D.F. Pring-Mill, 1961) / Punishment Without Revenge (translated by Jill Booty, in Five Plays, 1961; Gwynne Edwards, 1991) / Lost in a Mirror (translated by Adrian Mitchell, 1989)
• Las bizarrías de Belisa, 1634
• Porfiar hasta morir, 1638 - Porfiar hasta morir=Persistence Until Death (edited and translated by Antonio Cortijo Ocaña, Jessica Ernst Powell and Erin M. Rebhan, 2004)
• Padre engañado, 1805 - The Father Outwitted: An Interlude (tr. 1811)
• Comedias, 2022
  
• La mocedad de Bernardo del Carpio; El casamiento en la muerte, 2023 (edición de Alfredo Rodríguez López-Vázquez)
  

Other works:

• Fiestas de Denia al Rey Cathólico Felippo III, 1599
• Arte nuevo de hacer comedias, 1609 - The New Art of Writing Plays (translated by William T. Brewster, 1914)
• Iusta poetica y alabanzas iustas, 1620
• Soliloquios amorosos de un alma a Dios, 1626 (translator)