The Source of Lope de Vega's Los espanoles en Flandes

((fDE las comedias, probablemente numerosas, que Lope compuso sobre las guerras de Flandes, han llegado hasta nosotros cuatro por lo menos. S61o una de ellas, la titulada Pobreza no es vileza, merece figurar entre sus obras selectas. Las tres restantes valen muy poco.l This judgment of Men6ndez y Pelayo appears to have subsisted through the years, to judge from the little attention paid to these plays in recent times. The three others in question are Los espaioles en Flandes, Don Juan de Austria en Flandes, both written around the events of 1577-1578, and El asalto de Mastrique about the siege which Alexander Farnese undertook in 1579 after the death of Don Juan. Of these plays, Don Juan de Austria en Flandes is now thought unlikely to be by Lope,2 but the other two are unquestionably his, and by no means as bad as Men6ndez y Pelayo considered them. Their exaggerated nationalism and rather feeble amorous intrigues are compensated by the liveliness of the action and the vivid impression they give of the Spanish presence in the Netherlands

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