Lope de Vega's La inocente Laura and the Early Modern Transnational World (Cinzio, Greene, d'Ouville, and Pasca)

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on La inocente Laura, a play written by Lope de Vega in the first decade of the 1600s that has received little critical attention in spite of its role in a transnational network of textual relations that connects Italy, England, Spain, and France. I will examine La inocente Laura's transformative relationship to its main source, a novella written by Italian author Giambattista Giraldi Cinzio, by analyzing how Lope included in his play a negative image of court life and evil courtiers not present in Cinzio's tale. I will do so with a comparative and contrastive perspective, as the same novella that inspired Lope's La inocente Laura was also used in England by Robert Greene for his play The Scottish History of James the Fourth and Lope's text was adapted for the French and Italian stages by Antoine Le Métel d'Ouville and Gianbattista Pasca.

KEYWORDS:

• Giraldi Cinzio
• court
• Antoine Le Métel d'Ouville
• Robert Greene
• La inocente Laura
• Lope de Vega
• Gianbattista Pasca

Funding

This article has benefited from my participation in the following research projects funded by the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad: FFI2015-65197-C3-1-P, FFI2015-71441-REDC, and FFI2015-66216-P.

Notes on contributor

Alejandro García-Reidy is Assistant Professor at Syracuse University. His research focuses on different aspects of Early Modern Spanish literature and digital humanities. His publications include the monograph Las musas rameras. Oficio dramático y conciencia profesional en Lope de Vega and editions of Mujeres y criados and El castigo sin venganza.

Notes

1. For some of the most recent scholarship on this matter, see Romera Pintor (“De Giraldi”; “Lope”), Muñoz (116–19), and Resta and González Martínez.

2. I give further details on the connections between Cinzio's novella and La inocente Laura in the prologue to the critical edition of the play on which I am currently working.

3. Like Lope, Greene also expands his source by incorporating his own original theatrical elements, such as the framed structure with the Scot gentleman Bohan and Oberon, King of the Fairies; a more complex love story surrounding Ida; the characters of the clown Slipper and the dwarf Nano; and scenes related to the Scottish nobility and symbolic characters such as of the Lawyer, the Merchant, and the Divine. All of these are elements that I will not focus on here: see Braunmuiler, Leggatt, and Sanders.

4. Cinzio's own Arrenopia delves into topics not present in the original novella, but in a completely different direction, as “Arrenopia is primarily a discussion play dealing with the topical subjects of dueling and military procedure” (Horne 141).

5. I therefore differ from the classification of La inocente Laura as a comedia palatina as it currently appears in the database Artelope (Oleza et al.). Scholars such as Fausta Antonucci (148–49) and Christophe Couderc (“L'adaptation”) have associated La inocente Laura with the genre of the tragedy or tragicomedy, and both the source material and Lope's treatment of it, as I present in this article, only reinforce the characterization of La inocente Laura as a drama palatino—although with a lieto fine.

6. La inocente Laura is also the first time that Lope used one of Cinzio's novelle to write a full-fledged drama palatino, as earlier plays based on Degli Hecatommithi are either urban comedies or comedias palatinas. Lope's La discordia en los casados, written in 1611, is his only other Cinzio-inspired play that clearly develops as a drama palatino.

7. In this sense, Lope amplifies the role that lust plays in Cinzio's novella by also using it as a motive for Ricardo's actions, whereas Greene's Ateukin acts for material gains.