New Art of Writing Plays in This Time

…key to his plays, the Arte nuevo de hacer comedias en este tiempo. This verse apology rested on the sound Aristotelian principle that the dramatist’s first duty is to hold and satisfy his audience: the comedia, he says in effect, had developed in response to what the Spanish public demanded…

…Lope de Vega published his New Art of Writing Plays (1609), written out of his experience with popular audiences, was a commonsense voice raised against the classical rules, particularly on behalf of the importance of comedy and its natural mixture with tragedy. In England both Sir Philip Sidney in his…

…manifesto was Lope’s own treatise, Arte nuevo de hacer comedias en este tiempo (1609; “New Art of Writing Plays at This Time”), which rejected Neoclassical “rules,” opting to blend comedy and tragedy with metrical variety, and made public opinion the arbiter of good taste. The new comedia (“drama”) advocated respect…