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Titles

English title: Madness in Valencia
Date written: sometime between 1589 and 1590
First publication date: 1620
Keywords: morality > honour, morality > vice-virtue, identity, love > relationships, love > desire, society, madness
Genre and type: comedy

Pitch

All who are in love are mad, but how far does this madness go? Lope shows us with this rollicking comedy that ‘madness is often in the eye of the beholder’ (Thacker 2000: 16).

• Thacker, Jonathan. 2000. ‘Lope de Vega’s Exemplary Early Comedy: Los locos de Valencia’, Bulletin of the Comediantes, 52 , 9-29

Synopsis

‘The play is set almost entirely in the Hospital de los Inocentes in Valencia, Europe’s first asylum for the mentally disturbed […] The plot involves the coincidental incarceration in the hospital of two nobles newly arrived in Valencia, Erífila and Floriano. Erífila has run away from home to avoid an arranged marriage, and has been robbed and left all but naked in the woods by the servant, Leonato, with whom she eloped. Apparently rambling incoherently about her lost jewels, Erífila is taken for a madwoman by Pisano, who works in the hospital, and is escorted to the sanatorium where she decides it is sensible to feign madness in order to excuse her dishonourable situation. Floriano, having apparently killed Prince Reinero in self-defence, has travelled rapidly from Zaragoza to Valencia to ask his friend, Valerio, for protection from the authorities. Valerio suggests that his only hope of avoiding detection and execution is to pretend to be mad and voluntarily enter the asylum. He agrees readily and feigns a madness ‘entre Platón y Cupido’ […] [‘somewhere between Plato and Cupid’].Erífila and Floriano, previously unknown to each other, and now known as Elvira and Beltrán, meet as inmates, and gradually fall in love. Despite their madness both characters become the amorous targets of other sane Valencians. The comedy, amongst other things, traces the vicissitudes on the way to their final union, and addresses playfully the relationship of madness and love’ (Thacker 2000: 11-12).

• Thacker, Jonathan. 2000. ‘Lope de Vega’s Exemplary Early Comedy: Los locos de Valencia’, Bulletin of the Comediantes, 52 , 9-29

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‘The play is set almost entirely in the Hospital de los Inocentes in Valencia, Europe’s first asylum for the mentally disturbed […] The plot involves the coincidental incarceration in t... (Read more...)

Sources

The historical location of the Hospital de los Inocentes, foundedin Valencia in 1409 by the Mercedarian monk Gilabert Jofré, features as a source and an inspirational setting (Thacker 2000: 11). The play and the prefatory material to the original published edition are full of critique against Lope’s detractors.  He accuses them of ‘madness’, of suffering from a disconnection between what they really are and how they present themselves, or between what they are and what they seem to be.  Thacker concisely explains Lope’s message: ‘A reputation should be built on deeds and merit, where the outer appearance matches the inner urge (as in Lope’s thoughtful art), not on destructive impulses and malignancy (Lope’s foolish critics)’ (2000: 13).

• Thacker, Jonathan. 2000. ‘Lope de Vega’s Exemplary Early Comedy: Los locos de Valencia’, Bulletin of the Comediantes, 52 , 9-29

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The historical location of the Hospital de los Inocentes, foundedin Valencia in 1409 by the Mercedarian monk Gilabert Jofré, features as a source and an inspirational setting (Thacker 2... (Read more...)

Critical response

Scholars have been slower to recognise the performative and dramatic possibilities of this play than perhaps some of Lope’s more well-known works, though critics such as Jonathan Thacker have done much to bring the play to light. David Johnston’s production in English in 1992 brought the play to further critical attention. Critics vary in their approaches to the ‘madness’ in the play; its portrayal of the first dedicated mental asylum in Europe, the Hospital de los Inocentes in Valencia, has intrigued some, while others have focused on ‘literary madness’ or ‘madness of love’ rather than actual madness (Thacker 2000: 11).

• Thacker, Jonathan. 2000. ‘Lope de Vega’s Exemplary Early Comedy: Los locos de Valencia’, Bulletin of the Comediantes, 52 , 9-29

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Scholars have been slower to recognise the performative and dramatic possibilities of this play than perhaps some of Lope’s more well-known works, though critics such as Jonathan Thack... (Read more...)

Editions

• Vega, Lope de. 1620. Trezena parte de las comedias de Lope Félix de Vega Carpio. Madrid, Viuda de Alonso Martín

• Vega, Lope de. 1966. Los locos de Valencia, ed. José Luis Aguirre. Madrid, Aguilar

• Vega, Lope de. 2004. Los locos de Valencia, ed. Hélène Tropé. Madrid, Castalia

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• Vega, Lope de. 1620. Trezena parte de las comedias de Lope Félix de Vega Carpio. Madrid, Viuda de Alonso Martín

• Vega, Lope de. 1966. Los locos de Valencia, ed. José Luis Aguirre. Madri... (Read more...)

Useful readings and websites

• García Lorenzo, Luciano. 1989. ‘Amor y locura fingida: Los locos de Valencia de Lope de Vega’. In El mundo del teatro español en su Siglo de Oro: ensayos dedicados a John E. Varey, ed. J. M. Ruano de la Haza, pp. 213-28. Ottawa, Dovehouse (in Spanish)

• Thacker, Jonathan. 2000. '"Que yo le haré de suerte que os espante,/ si el fingimiento a la verdad excede": Creative Use of Art in Lope de Vega's Los locos de Valencia (and Velázquez's Fábula de Aracne)', Modern Language Review 95, 1007-18

• Thacker, Jonathan. 2000. ‘Lope de Vega’s Exemplary Early Comedy: Los locos de Valencia’, Bulletin of the Comediantes, 52 , 9-29

• Thacker, Jonathan. 2004. ‘La locura en las obras dramáticas tempranas de Lope de Vega’. In Memoria de la palabra: Actas del VI Congreso de la Asociación Internacional Siglo de Oro, eds. María Luisa Lobato y Francisco Domínguez Matito II, 1717-30. Frankfurt and Madrid: Iberoamericana (in Spanish)

• Thacker, Jonathan. 2009. ‘La autoridad de la figura del loco en las comedias de Lope de Vega’. In Autoridad y poder en el Siglo de Oro, eds. Ignacio Arellano, Christoph Strosetzki and Edwin Williamson, pp. 175-88. Madrid/Frankfurt, Iberoamericana/Vervuert (in Spanish)

Similar plays

• El astrólogo fingido (c.1623) / The Fake Astrologer

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Entry written by Kathleen Jeffs. Last updated on 16 May 2012.

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