ENCINA, JUAN del. — Spanish playwright, born in 1469 in Salamanca, died probably in 1529 in León. A student at Salamanca and subsequently in the service of the duke of Alba, in 1489 he was in Rome as a singer in the papal Chapel. Having received Minor Orders, he obtained a benefice in Malaga, where he was in 1510, but in 1512 he was once again in Rome; having decided to be ordained a priest, in 1519 he went on pilgrimage to Jerusalem. He lived in León from 1523 to 1529.
Poet and musician. To him belong the first dramatic eclogues (15) in Castilian literature, preceded only by the «representaciones» of Gómez Manrique. In these, from the simplest manner informing the eclogues of the Passion and the Resurrection, and, with greater warmth and vivacity, 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 Cardinal d’Arborea, E.’s art turns toward 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, with a distinctly student-like and medieval character, is the Auto del repelén; in the poem Trivagía 6, finally, the poet’s journey to the Holy Land is recounted, but in a cold and faded tone. E.’s Canzoniere, first published in Salamanca in 1496, has been reprinted in modern times by the Spanish Academy (1928).