Lope de Vega's La dama boba and the Construction of Comedy

Abstract

The essay seeks to extract from Lope de Vega's La dama boba (1613) what might be labelled the playwright's theory of comedy. The process is thus internal, based not on reigning prescriptions and poetics but rather on the specific ways in which Lope uses language, circumstance, literary precedent, and an expressed interest in pleasing the public as he composes a comic play. La dama boba is overdetermined; it moves in multiple directions and examines the motives and mysteries of love (and chemistry) from multiple vantage points. Its humour is based on a number of elements that are hardly innately funny: honour, social decorum, strongly patriarchal rules of conduct, and bobería itself. Although love obviously is a key factor here, emotion is often replaced with self-interest, and the blend is ultimately inviting, exciting, and open to critique. In considering La dama boba, I address my attempt to re-create aspects of Lope's comic vision in an adaptation of the play titled Wit's End, which was first performed in 2006.