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Resurrecting Lope's Autos, Errol Leroy King

Theses and Dissertations

By the turn of the seventeenth century, the auto sacramental quickly became the most elaborate dramatic genre in Spain. Shortly after the Council of Trent, professional playwrights replaced clerics who had previously written autos for the Corpus Christi celebrations held each year, but none were more influential than Lope de Vega in refining thematic, literary, and staging elements and techniques. At the middle of the nineteenth century, critics began to study the genre that a royal decree had banned almost a century earlier; however, few have dedicated much time to Lope's autos. As a result, most critics have misunderstood …