Lope de Vega and the Publication of Eight (or Ten) Plays «en otra parte»... a First Editorial Project for his Theatre?

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to study the final lines of El peregrino en su patria (1604), which have not received the attention that they deserve, although they have given rise to different interpretations. As I will attempt to argue by analysing the text and its context, Lope seems to sketch two editorial projects of distinct nature, both of which were frustrated by the theatre business: the publication of a volume of eight of his best plays, an amount that must be linked to the eight official companies, and the promise of a second part of his Byzantine romance, which would include two other plays. The study of the selected plays proves that the first Lopean dramatic canon is guided by the «autores de comedias», the audience’s interest, the most popular literary genres and the Seis comedias de Lope de Vega Carpio, published in 1603. At that moment, theatre was a product almost exclusively connected to the stage, so much so that the unpleasant publication of the Seis comedias was enough to stimulate Lope’s first sketch of an editorial project, but it didn’t lead him to act against the rules of the theatre business, in which playwrights were only supposed to provide manuscripts to the companies. Nevertheless, thanks to the final lines of El peregrino en su patria, we are able to glimpse some of the strategies that, years later, immersed in an extraordinary editorial whirlpool, Lope would fully develop: a selection of a personal canon, an authorial reappropriation, and an evocation of the «autores de comedias».