A Freudian Character in Lope de Vega

Abstract

One of the most attractive aspects of our national theatre is that it continually offers the most unexpected surprises. These surprises are multiplied within a dramatic world as extensive as that created by Lope de Vega. Furthermore, these surprises are seen in their fullest clarity when the illuminating light of modern ideas are turned on the art forms of the seventeenth century. This happens when we reread The Outrageous Saint. At first this comedy makes a very unsatisfactory impression. From a normal point of view, the monstrousness of the theme seems explicable only by supposing that Lope, always impulsive, had given way to irresponsible and uncontrolled fantasies. But after reading Freud and the works of other modern psychoanalysts—something that at first sight appears irrelevant to the understanding of an author of the Golden Age—we realize that Lope's play was far in advance of its time.