Note 168 — BOOK VI.
Herman Oelsner translation
The correct, full form of this writer's name seems to be Juan de la Cueva de Garoza. He is conjectured to have been born in 1550 and to have died in 1609. This interesting dramatist was among the most distinguished of Lope de Vega's immediate predecessors, and in such plays as El Cerco de Zamora he comes near anticipating Lope's methods. In his Exemplar poético (1609) Cueva declares that he was the first to bring kings upon the stage, an innovation that was censured at the time:—
A mi me culpan de que fuí el primero que Reyes y Deydades di al teatro de las Comedias traspasando el fuero.
Evidently Cueva did not know that Torres Naharro introduces a king in his Aquilana. A reprint of Cueva's plays is urgently needed: his purely poetic work is of slight value. An edition of El Viage de Sannio, with an admirable Introduction by Professor Fredrik Amadeus Wulff will be found in the Acta Universitatis Lundensis (Lund, 1887-1888), (Philosophi, Språkvetenskap och Historia), vol. xxiii.