Researchers from the universities of Valladolid and Vienna have discovered a new comedy by Lope de Vega (1562-1635) entitled La francesa Laura, written five o six years before his death. The manuscript is in good condition and arrived at the institution after the purchase made by the State in 1886 of the library of the Duke of Osuna.
Thanks to programs for transcribing the text and its subsequent comparison with other comedies from the Spanish Golden Age, including those by this prolific writer, it has been possible to put an author on this hitherto anonymous work. As reported today by the BNE, the discovery was made possible thanks to their collaboration with the project Stylometry applied to Golden Century Theater (ETSO), directed by Álvaro Cuéllar and Germán Vega, the researchers responsible for the discovery, and which has up to 150 people dedicated to the application of computer analysis to the theatrical literature of the golden age to unravel problems of authorship.
“Artificial intelligence has revealed itself as a great ally for the historical-philological discipline, an aid for solving problems and for optimizing time and processes, with a processing power unprecedented up to now, which has managed to discover a needle in a haystack: a new comedy written by Lope de Vega from among thousands of printed and handwritten documents”, according to the BNE.
In this new genuine comedy by the so-called Fénix de los Ingenios, the political context in which it was written is glimpsed thanks to the presence and “flattering” treatment of the French, which the title already highlights, and which seems to indicate that it was composed in the short period in which the crown of the neighboring country allied itself with the Spanish against the English at the end of the twenties.
The manuscript, dated at the end of the 17th century, several decades after Lope’s death, is a copy, perhaps of the original or of another copy, it is written by three hands, one per act. The plot of this palatial comedy full of entanglements and challenges for honor takes place in France and revolves around Laura, daughter of the Duke of Brittany and married to Count Arnaldo. The dauphin, heir to the French throne, falls in love with her and sets out to woo her at any cost.
But the protagonist resists the prince’s attacks and the suspicions of her husband who, in a fit of jealousy and fear of public dishonor, tries to end his wife’s life with a powerful poison. Finally, Laura’s integrity is proven and happiness is restored to the couple.
Lope de Vega knew that the bulk of his audience was female and that is why there is a determined defense of women at the start of the text, from which these verses can be extracted: “Beyond the fact that women have so many feats that in arms and the letters envy men cause”.
Lope’s hand is also found in his description of love in Spain, which, according to him, is the “tenderest” nation when it comes to making people fall in love: “I have not seen two people who love each other like the two. It is luck that who love each other and are courteous, who look like Spaniards, who, although it is such a severe nation, once they fall in love it is the most tender of all”.
In addition to the research work of Álvaro Cuéllar (University of Vienna) and Germán Vega (University of Valladolid), the Prolope group, from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), has also participated in editing and studying the work of lope; as well as the application of the Transkribus tool, which has allowed the automatic and “accurate” transcription of this manuscript after being trained for this task. The details of this great discovery can be read in a scientific article published today in the magazine Anuario Lope de Vega. Text, literature, culture, from the Autonomous University of Barcelona, ??the center to which the Prolope Group belongs.
“Among the 1,300 comedies transcribed automatically (by this tool), La francesa Laura was classified as written by Lope de Vega (…) the lexical uses of the work closely aligned with his, and did not with the other 350 playwrights of the time who were involved in the experiment”, they explained.
Of course, the researchers did not “just” stay with this computer result and carried out other tests such as the study of versification (how Lope habitually used metrics in his works), or orthology (how he pronounced words and used diphthongs, hiatus or sinalefas). The manuscript is digitized and can be consulted on the BNE website.
