ABSTRACT
In his dedication to the eighth parte of his collected plays (1623), Félix Lope de Vega argues that theater, which he equates with reality in a deft analogy that pairs written histories and paintings, is the most effective medium for conveying history. He says that history is richer and more immediate when performed and that, consequently, it can “renovar la fama [de famosas hazañas, o sentencias], desde los Teatros, a las memorias de las gentes donde los libros lo hacen con menos fuerza y más dificultad y espacio” (reawaken famous exploits and maxims in people’s memories from the stage, while books do the same less effectively in more space).1 He argues, in essence, that theater unites its audience both culturally-by narrating a shared history-and physically, binding the crowd as a community. By favoring a presence-based genre, Lope implicitly endorses a particular view of the Spanish community-a political entity that came into being only in the late fifteenth century. The idea that, while history may be global, the experience of it is always necessarily local (whether textual and individual or aural and collective) is striking in the context of the first global empire. It is only more so when the event being commemorated is the birth of the empire: the unification of the Iberian peninsula and the immediate maritime expansion of the thus solidified state.
