1910 Articles

The Devil as a Dramatic Figure in the Spanish Religious Drama before Lope de Vega

Crawford, J. P. Wickersham

While many Spanish plays of the sixteenth century have recently been published, comparatively little attention has been paid to some of the characters which constantly appear in these plays. In the drama of the sixteenth century we find many characters which were developed by the more skillful dramatists of the following century and a study of these earlier plays is necessary to a complete understanding of the more finished products. It is the purpose of this article to study the Devil as a dramatic figure in the Spanish religious drama before Lope de Vega. Appended is a list of the plays which were accessible to me in which the Devil appears, and they are grouped for the sake of convenience into Mysteries, Plays on the Lives of Saints and Moralities.