Encina, Juan del

ENCINA, JUAN del. - Spanish playwright, b. in 1469 at Salamanca, d. probably in 1529 at León. A student at Salamanca and later in the service of the Duke of Alba, in 1489 he was in Rome as a singer in the Pontifical Chapel. Having received the minor orders, he obtained a benefice at Malaga, where he was in 1510, but in 1512 he was again in Rome; having resolved to be ordained a priest, in 1519 he went on pilgrimage to Jerusalem. He lived at León from 1523 to 1529.

Poet and musician. To him are owed the first dramatic eclogues (15) of Castilian literature, preceded only by the «representaciones» of Gómez Manrique, in which, from the simplest manner that informs the eclogues of the Passion and the Resurrection, and with greater warmth and liveliness those inspired by the Nativity, but always poor in plot and situations, one passes to a second manner intensely inspired by the atmosphere of the Italian Renaissance. Thus in the Eglogo de Pideida y Victoriano, performed for the first time in Rome in 1513 at the house of Card. d'Arborea, E.'s art turns to decidedly pagan and mythological forms inspired by Italian comedies and by Castilian works such as the Cárcel de Amor and the Celestina. Burlesque and coarse, of pronounced student and medieval flavor, is the Auto del repelén; in the poem Trivagía 6, finally, the poet's journey to the Holy Land is narrated, but in a cold and colorless tone. E.'s Canzoniere, published for the first time in 1496 at Salamanca, has been reprinted in modern times by the Spanish Academy (1928).