Lope and the Courtly Spectacle: Between Tradition and Innovation

This paper focuses on the period of Lope de Vega’s activity as a playwright in order to reconstruct the theatrical and festive activity related to the court of the Austrias, based on gathering existing information and archival documents. It reviews this tradition of spectacle, on which we have increasing information, as a background that allows us to understand and correctly contextualize the great spectacle-plays that Lope de Vega wrote from early stages of his career until shortly before his death, with the aim of unveiling the transformations that he brought to this tradition