Manuscript believed missing for 400 years found in library

A PREVIOUSLY unpublished seventeenth century manuscript by Lope de Vega has been found.

A philologist from the University of Barcelona, ​​Gaston Gilabert, has discovered it in the Library of Cataluña.

It is from the play ‘El Amor Enamorado’ (Love in love) which was written between 1625 and 1635 and was published posthumously and contains a key reference in the work which was the playwright’s last mythological comedy.

It deals with the myth of Apollo and Daphne, mixing the fable of Ovid with the pastoral genre which was fashionable at the time.

Gilabert came across it while doing research on baroque theatre. He followed the evidence of a song which had not been heard of for 400 years and found it with different lyrics.

He explained that a religious man from the same century as Lope de Vega took the song which he had made popular on stage, erasing the pagan verses and changing them for sacred content.

However, it still contains traces of Lope’s original verses which allowed Gilabert to solve the mystery.

The author has published his find in the journal Castilla, Estudios de Literatura.

El Amor Enamorado was staged in El Retiro Gardens, dedicated to King Felipe IV and Queen Isabel de Borbon.

Gilabert, who is part of the Poetic Music Digital Research Group (ASODAT), plans to publish the essay ‘The charm of the gods: myth, poetry and music in the theatre of Lope de Vega’.

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