1. Doze comedias de Lope de Vega Carpio familiar del Santo Oficio. Sacadas de sus originates. Quarto parte … (Madrid, 1614).Google Scholar The earliest date in the preliminaries is 20 December 1613. Maria Cruz Pérez y Pérez, Bibliografia del teatro de Lope de Vega, Cuadernos bibliográficos, 29 (Madrid, 1973)Google Scholar, records two other editions of 1614, printed in Barcelona and Pamplona (pp. 40–1). A translation is available in Lope de Vega (Five Plays). Translated by Jill Booty, ed. Pring-Mill, R. D. F. (New York, 1961).Google Scholar This is an acting version, and hence does not seek to give a literal translation; I have therefore not used it in this article, and instead offer my own literal translations where necessary.

2. Salomon, Noël, ‘Toujours la date de Peribáñez y el Comendador de Ocaña, “tragicomedia” de Lope de Vega’, in Mélanges offerts a Marcel Bataillon par les hispanistes français, ed. M. Chevalier, R. Ricard and N. Salomon, Bulletin hispanique, LXIV bis (1962), pp. 613–43.Google Scholar Other critics have suggested 1604–1609 or 1611–1613; see Salomon, Noël, ‘Simple Remarque à propos du problème de la date de Peribáñez y el Comendador de Ocaña’ Bulletin hispanique, LXIII (1961), pp. 251–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar, where earlier critical opinion is summarised, and Courtney Bruerton, ‘La quinta de Florencia, fuente de Peribáñez’, Nueva Revista de Filología Hispánica, IV (1950), pp. 25–39.Google Scholar

3. Wilson, Edward M., ‘Images et structure dans Peribáñez’, Bulletin hispanique, LI (1949), pp. 125–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Wilson's article should be read in conjunction with Dixon, Victor, ‘The Symbolism of Peribáñez’, Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, XLIII (1966), pp. 11–24.Google Scholar I am heavily indebted to both these excellent studies of imagery.

4. Reference is made throughout to the edition by Aubrun, Ch.-V. and Montesinos, J. F. (Paris, Hachette, 1943).Google Scholar

5. Wilson, , 127–30.Google Scholar See also Boorman, J. T., ‘Divina Ley and Derecho Humano in Peribáñez’, Bulletin of the Comediantes, XII, 2 (1960), pp. 12–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For a summary of other critical views of this scene, see also Varey, J. E., ‘La Campagne dans le théâtre espagnol au XVIIe siècle’, in Dramaturgic et Société, ed. Jacquot, Jean (Paris, 1968), 1, 47–76 (pp. 62–6).Google Scholar

6. They call him ‘generous lord’ (251), the ‘flower of Spain, a gallant knight and valiant warrior’ (291–3).

7. See the article by E. M. Wilson for a contrast of this and other similar courtly imagery with that employed by Peribáñez.

8. Reichenberger, Arnold, ‘The Uniqueness of the comedia’, Hispanic Review, XXVII (1959), pp. 303–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar, has made the general point that many plays of the Golden Age deal with the disruption of harmony, but that harmony is usually restored at the end; see also Varey, ‘La Campagne…’.

9. Varey, , ‘La Campagne…’, esp. p. 60Google Scholar and note 28, summarises some recent critical discussion of the symbolism of the fall. In an interesting and important article, Güntert, Georges, ‘Relección de Peribáñez’, Revista de Filología Española, LIV (1971), pp. 37–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar, makes the point that the fall in itself was a mischance, a result of the turning of Fortune's wheel (pp. 44–5); nevertheless, it can be argued that it was the result of the Comendador's desire to cut a figure, the ‘rash thought’ in one of the two interpretations of line 383.

10. Cf. Boorman, , pp. 13–14.Google Scholar

11. de Vega, Lope, El remedio en la desdicha, ed. Barker, J. W. (Cambridge, 1931), lines 1314–16.Google Scholar

12. Feathers are often employed in the comedia as a symbol of vanity, an extension of the attitude enshrined in the popular saying, ‘Plumas y palabras, todas se las Ileva el viento’, quoted by Casilda herself later in the play (1965–6). Cf. Correas, Gonzalo, Vocabulario de refranes y frases proverbiales… (Madrid, 1924), p. 379.Google Scholar

13. Luján backs up his advice with a sonnet (603–16), skilfully analysed by Dunn, Peter N., ‘Some Uses of Sonnets in the Plays of Lope de Vega’, Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, XXXIV (1957), pp. 213–22 (pp. 218–20).Google Scholar

14. On the significance of the term ‘discrecion’ in the seventeenth century, see Bates, Margaret J., ‘Discreción’ in the Works of Cervantes: A Semantic Study (Washington, D.C., 1945)Google Scholar; and Parker, A. A., ‘The Meaning of discreción in No hay más fortuna que Dios: The Medieval Background and Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Usage’, in Pedro Calderón de la Barca, No hay más fortuna que Dios, ed. Parker, A. A., 2nd ed. (Manchester, 1962), pp. 77–92.Google Scholar An understanding of the term is clearly of the utmost significance for an appreciation of Lope's play.

15. See Livermore, H. V., ‘El caballero salvaje. Ensayo de identificatión de un juglar’, Revista de Filología Española, XXXIV (1950), pp. 166–33Google Scholar; Vicente, Gil, Dom Duardos, ed. Alonso, Dámaso (Madrid, 1942)Google Scholar; Williams, J. D., ‘The Savage in Sixteenth-Century Spanish Prose Fiction’, Kentucky Foreign Language Quarterly, III (1956), pp. 40–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Deyermond, A. D., ‘El hombre salvaje en la novela sentimental’, Filologia, X (1964), pp. 97–111Google Scholar; Mazur, Oleh, ‘Various Folkloric Impacts upon the salvaje in the Spanish comedia’, Hispanic Review, XXXVI (1968), pp. 207–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mazur, Oleh, ‘Lope de Vega's Salvajes, Indios and Bárbaros’, Iberoromania, II (1970), pp. 260–81.Google Scholar

16. In discussing this scene, I am indebted to my colleague, Dr P. R. K. Halhoree, who generously allowed me to see the text of an unpublished article, ‘El episodio de la estatua de San Roque en Peribáñez, de Lope de Vega’. See also the study of this scene (p. 177), in the interesting article of Turner, Alison, ‘The Dramatic Function of Imagery and Symbolism in Peribáñez and El caballero de Olmedo’, Symposium, XX (1966), pp. 174–86.Google Scholar

17. On the role of Inés, see Case, Thomas E., ‘El papel de Inés en Peribáñez’, Duquesne Hispanic Review, X (1971), pp. 1–9Google Scholar; and, by the same author, an article of the same title and content in Romanische Forschungen, LXXXIV (1972), pp. 546–52.Google Scholar

18. Images associated with reaping are discussed by Dixon, pp. 14–15. For a study of the cycle of nature as reflected in the imagery of the play, see also the article by Wilson.

19. On portraits in the works of Lope de Vega, see the brief studies of Peyton, Myron A., ‘The retrato as Motif and Device in Lope de Vega’, Romance Notes, IV (1962–1963), pp. 51–7Google Scholar; and Erdman, E. George Jr., ‘An Additional Note on the retrato Motif in Lope’, Romance Notes, V (1963–1964), pp. 183–6.Google Scholar For an important statement on seventeenth-century Spanish attitudes to portraiture, see Davies, Gareth Alban, ‘Pintura: Background and Sketch of a Spanish Seventeenth-Century Court Genre’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, XXXVIII (1975), pp. 288–313.CrossRefGoogle Scholar On the importance of the portrait in the present play, see Randel, Mary Gaylord, ‘The Portrait and the Creation of Peribáñez’, Romanische Forschungen, LXXXIV (1973), pp. 145–58.Google Scholar

20. Dunn, , Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, XXXIV (1957), pp. 220–1Google Scholar, points out that the function of the sonnet ‘is to show that the Comendador's passion for Casilda is not only wrong but a perversion of nature, and also to show the Comendador turning away from recognising this fact’. For a differing view, see Dixon, , pp. 18–19.Google Scholar

21. See, for example, Randel, , pp. 151–8.Google Scholar

22. At the end of the play, Peribáñez says that he took down the hangings ‘which might have served as a cloak for the bull’ (3062–3), in this way linking the symbolism of the hangings with that of the bull, which has clearly come to stand for the Comendador (see Turner, pp. 176–7). This is Peribafiez's reason for returning the hangings on the plot level; in thematic terms, he rejects them as incompatible with his status: ‘from my low walls I took down the hangings’ (3061–2). I thus can not agree with Jones, R. O., ‘Poets and Peasants’, in Homenaje a William L. Fichter. Estudios sobre el teatro antiguo hispánico y otros ensayos, ed. Kossoff, A. D. and Vázquez, J. (Madrid, 1971), pp. 341–55Google Scholar, that ‘Lope contrives… to convey to his audience Peribáñez's immunity to ambition and thoughts above his station’ (p. 354). Peribáñez himself in the last scene of Act 11 recognises a temporary weakness on his own part.

23. Thompson, Flora, Lark Rise to Candleford, World's Classics (Oxford, 1968), p. 15.Google Scholar

24. de Vega, Lope and de Monroy, Cristóbal, Fuenteovejuna (Dos comedias), Castalia, Clásicos, ed. Estrada, Francisco López (Madrid, 1969)Google Scholar, lines 946–7: ‘… no es posible que den / honra los que no la tienen’.

25. ‘La obligatión de la espada / que le ciñó el mismo dla / que la Cruz de Calatrava / le cubrió el pecho, bastaba / para aprender cortesía’; lines 32–6.

26. R. O.Jones, for instance, suggests that ‘doubtless an actor should make broad comedy of much of this scene’ (pp. 354–5).

27. The figures of Belardo, who appears in this scene, has been taken by many commentators to represent Lope himself, since he frequently introduced himself into his own plays in this way. See Pring-Mill's note to the Booty translation, p. 42, for a summary of the critical attitudes. This attack on the nobility fits in with the Salomon thesis, which sees the play as a veiled attack on don Rodrigo Calderón (Mélanges…). I have not gone into this aspect of the play, since it is not relevant to my purpose. On hidalgos cansados, see Mérimée, Henri, ‘Casados ou cansados. Note sur un passage de Lope de Vega’, Revista de Filologia Española, VI (1919), pp. 61–3Google Scholar; and Silverman, Joseph K., ‘Los hidalgos cansados de Lope de Vega’, in Homenaje a William L. Fichter…, pp. 693–711.Google Scholar

28. A serious pun. Caña = reed, and the name of the town, Ocaña, suggests an apostrophe to the reed: Oh caña.

29. In many comedias the lover entering into the house, whether as a result of prior arrangement or not, is an obvious symbol of honour (i.e. reputation) at risk.

30. As Boorman points out, p. 14, the begging of the Comendador's pardon underlines the judicial nature of the killing, suggesting that Peribáñez is carrying out an act of public justice rather than a private revenge.

31. Luján is also a social climber. On the possible significance of the use in this play of the name Luján – which was the surname of Lope's mistress, Micaela Luján – see Salomon, , BH, LXIII (1961), pp. 251–8.Google Scholar

32. In addition to the works listed in previous notes, I am indebted also to the following articles and books:

Almasov, Alexy, ‘Fuenteovejuna y el honor villanesco en el teatro de Lope de Vega’, Cuadernos hispanoamericanos, 161–2 (1963), pp. 701–55Google Scholar; Angulo, Amando Carlos Isasi, ‘Carácter conservador del teatro de Lope de Vega’, Nueva Revista de Filología Hispánica, XXII (1973), pp. 265–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Peristiany, J. G. (ed.), Honour and Shame. The Values of Mediterranean Society (London, 1965)Google Scholar; Salomon, Noël, Recherches sur le thème paysan dans la ‘comedia’ au temps de Lope de Vega (Bordeaux, 1965)Google Scholar; Toledano, J., ‘Notas para una interpretatión del Peribáñez’, Escorial (Madrid), XX (1949), pp. 737–44.Google Scholar