Cervantes is unquestionably the most glorious figure in the annals of Spanish literature, but his very universality makes him less representative of his race. A far more typical local genius is his great rival Lope Félix de Vega Carpio who, for nearly half a century, reigned supreme on the stage at which Cervantes often cast longing eyes. My task would be much easier if I could feel sure that all of you were acquainted with the best and most recent biography of Lope which we owe to a distinguished American scholar, Professor Hugo Albert Rennert. I should then be able to indulge in the luxury of pure literary criticism. As it is, I must attempt to picture to you the prodigious personality of one who has enriched us with an immense library illustrating a new form of dramatic art. Lope Félix de Vega Carpio, as he signed himself, was born at Madrid on November 25, 1562, just three hundred and forty-five years ago to-day.[100] There is some slight reason to think that his parents—Félix de Vega Carpio and Francisca Hernández Flores—came from the village of Vega in the valley of Carriedo at the foot of the Asturian hills. The historic name of Carpio does not accord well with the modest occupation of Lope’s father who appears to have been a basket-maker; but every respectable Spanish family is more or less noble, and, though Lope was given to displaying a splendidly emblazoned escutcheon in some of his works—a foible which brought down on him the banter of Cervantes and of Góngora—he made no secret of his father’s lowly station. Long afterwards, when Lope de Vega was in the noon of his popularity, Cervantes described him as a _monstruo de naturaleza_—a portent of nature—and, if we are to believe the legends that float down to us, he must have been a disconcerting wonder as a child—dictating verses before he could write, learning Latin when he was five. A few years later we hear of him as an accomplished dancer and fencer, as an adventurous little truant from the Theatine school at which he was educated, and as a juvenile dramatist. One of his plays belonging to this early period survives, but as a re-cast. It would have been interesting to read the piece in its original form: its title—_El Verdadero Amante_ (The True Lover)—suggests some precocity in a boy of twelve. At an age when most lads are spinning tops Lope was already imagining dramatic situations and impassioned love-scenes.