El príncipe tirano by Juan de la Cueva as the Spanish source of Thomas Lodge’s A Margarite of America: A comparative suggestion

Abstract

Lodge claimed A Margarite of America (1596) was based on a still unidentified “historie in the Spanish tong.” Although several critics have suggested that the romance’s design outlines the structure of a play, the source “historie” has never been sought in the Spanish theatre. This essay proposes Juan de la Cueva’s El príncipe tirano (1583) as the possible Spanish source text of Lodge’s Margarite. After an introduction, the plot is outlined to show, firstly, the romance’s intertextual elements already detected by scholarly criticism and, secondly, others Lodge might have borrowed from El príncipe tirano. This article will supplement current studies on Margarite by shedding new light on the plot and characters.