Castro y Bellvís, Guillén

CASTRO Y BELLVÍS, GUILLÉN. - Spanish playwright, b. at Valencia in 1569, d. at Madrid on 28 July 1631, one of the founders of the Academia de los Nocturnos.

Highly esteemed by Lope and praised by Cervantes, he moves from the pre-Lopean forms of the earlier Valencian school (El conde de Irba, El caballero bobo, etc.) toward decidedly realistic forms, renewed by the impulse of the Fénix (Los mal casados de Valencia, El conde Alarcos, the two parts of Las Mocedades, etc.), and then returns to his earlier manner but with a more energetic and complex psychological elaboration (El nieto de su padre, La tragedia por los celos, etc.). His theater is characterized by a fervent love of the «romances», especially historical and chivalric ones, and by a predilection for the problems of married life and its conflicts, while a sober measure, sweetness of versification, and absence of exaggeration still make its reading pleasant, from the mythological-colored (Dido y Eneas, etc.) to the Cervantine-flavored (El curioso impertinente, La fuerza de la sangre, etc.) to Las Mocedades, of mature technique and heroic, grandiose simplicity, enlivened by a most noble patriotic sentiment.

His few religious comedies, such as the Degollación de San Juan Bautista and El mejor esposo, on the well-known theme of St. Joseph's «celos», are carefully elaborated but of scant literary value.

Jole Scudieri Ruggieri