The King the Greatest Alcalde by Lope de Vega

Originally El mejor alcalde, el rey, it is another of Lope de Vega’s famous plays. I read the 1936 translation by John Garrett Underhill. 

1/ The play begins with a poor man named Sancho (not Panza) wanting to marry Elvira, daughter of a farmer named Nuño. Elvira loves him and Nuño approves of the marriage but Sancho has to ask for blessings from his employer Don Tello, who generously gives him a bunch of sheep and cows as a present. 

Troubles begin when Don Tello, the most powerful man in Galicia, shows up during the preparations for the wedding and sees Elvira and wants her for himself. It is a very good scene. 

He calls off the wedding, and then abducts her. 

Look at this exchange: 

“DON TELLO […] How then, Elvira, could your cruel rage 

Treat me thus foully? Cannot your rigor see 

That this is love? 

ELVIRA Never, my lord, for love 

That is deficient in a true respect 

For honor, is but vile desire, not love, 

And being evil, love never can be called. 

For love is born of loving what one loves 

In mad desire, 

And love that is not chaste 

By no name of love is graced 

Nor ever can to love’s estate aspire.” 

(Act 2) 

She explains: 

“ELVIRA […] Last night you saw me, Tello, for the first; 

Why, then, your love was such a sudden thing 

That you had scarce a moment to consider 

What that thing was which you so much desired; 

Yet in that knowledge all true love resides. 

For love is born of a great-grown desire, 

And love goes mounting then the steps of favor 

Even to its own end and exercise. 

So this you feel was never love we see 

In simple truth—mad lust and longing rather…”

(ibid.) 

Isn’t this so good? Jane Austen would have loved this, and I can’t help thinking that these speeches would have fit rather well in a Shakespeare play. 

2/ Don Tello imprisons Elvira in a tower, and when Nuño has a chance to speak to his daughter, what does he say? 

“NUÑO I never thought to see your face again, 

Not that these bars have confined you prisoner 

In cruel duress, but rather in my sight 

I held you for dishonored. So foul a thing 

Dishonor is in honorable minds, 

So vile, so loathsome ugly, even to me 

Who brought you to the world, even to me 

It must forbid that I should see you more. 

[…] Let her who renders count of her soul’s treasure

In faithless wise, call me no more father. 

Because a daughter of like infamy—

And all too weak are these the words I speak—

Upon a father has one single claim, 

That he shall shed her blood!” 

(Act 3) 

This is even worse than Hero’s father’s reaction to Claudio’s accusations in Much Ado About Nothing! 

I’m getting irritated with the way 17th century Spaniards keep harping on about a woman’s honour. Look at the plays I’ve been reading: 

A Dog in the Manger (Lope de Vega): X 

Fuenteovejuna (Lope de Vega): ✓ 

The Surgeon of Honour (Calderón): ✓

Life Is a Dream (Calderón): ✓

The Trickster of Seville (Tirso de Molina): ✓

And now, The King the Greatest Alcalde (Lope de Vega): ✓ 

It’s getting rather tiresome. 

3/ I shouldn’t be comparing Lope de Vega to Shakespeare, but I can’t help noticing the parallels between The King the Greatest Alcalde and Measure for Measure: in both plays, there is a tyrant; in both plays, the tyrant wants to possess a woman but she refuses; in both plays, a more powerful person walks around in disguise to uncover the truth and restore justice.

However, Measure for Measure is in many ways a deeper and more sophisticated play: Elvira has a vivid existence, especially in the conversations with Sancho at the beginning, but she’s unambiguously good, not complex and problematic (for lack of a better word) like Isabella; Don Tello shows his generosity at the beginning, but from the moment he lusts after Elvira, he’s purely tyrannical and monomaniacal; we don’t see Don Tello question himself or struggle with his conscience, as Angelo does in Measure for Measure; it depicts tyranny and the conditions of women, but Shakespeare’s play raises questions about power, justice, mercy, virtue, goodness, and so on. The King the Greatest Alcalde is a fun play, satisfying—when Don Tello gets his comeuppance—but like Fuenteovejuna, it’s an unambiguous play between the evil tyrant and the good lower class. There isn’t much depth or complexity. 

But I will be fair and say that one thing complicates the play, whether or not it’s Lope de Vega’s intent: Nuño’s speech to Elvira (quoted above) shows the fanatical obsession with a woman’s honour and the unfairness to women. Lope de Vega himself might not have intended it to be a condemnation of Spanish culture, but that detail is there and it darkens the play—what if the King doesn’t intervene? 

The King the Greatest Alcalde is a play feminists (in the Anglophone world) would love (if they know about it).