Note 210 — BOOK VI.
Herman Oelsner translation
Andrés Rey de Artieda was born in 1549 and died in 1613. His youth was one of rare promise. Though not yet fourteen years old when Gil Polo wrote the Diana enamorada, he is introduced to us as a poet in the Canto del Turia:—
y prometernos han sus tiernas flores frutos entre los buenos los mejores.
This phrase may have been in Cervantes's mind when writing of his own play, La Confusa: "la cual, con paz sea dicho de cuantas comedias de capa y espada hasta hoy se han representado, bien puede tener lugar señalado par buena entre las mejores" (see the Adjunta al Parnaso).
Artieda graduated in arts at the University of Valencia in 1563, and studied later at Lérida and Tolosa, taking his degree as doctor of both civil and canonical law at the age of twenty. This brilliant academic success was received con aplauso y pronósticos extraños, and a great future seemed to await him. However, he was something of a rolling stone. He practised for a short while at the bar, but abandoned the profession in disgust and entered the army. Here, again, he seemed likely to carry all before him. In his first campaign he was promoted at a bound to the rank of captain, but his luck was now run out. Like Cervantes, he received three wounds at Lepanto. He was present at the relief of Cyprus, and served under Parma in the Low Countries. His intrepidity was proverbial, and he is said to have swum across the Ems in midwinter, his sword gripped between his teeth, under the enemy's fire. These heroic feats do not appear to have brought him advancement, and, in the Viaje del Parnaso (cap. iii.), Cervantes, who would seem to have known him personally, speaks of Artieda grown old as—
Más rico de valor que de moneda.
Artieda is said to have written plays entitled El Príncipe vicioso, Amadís de Gaula, and Los Encantos de Merlín: he is the author of a mediocre tragedy, Los Amantes (Valencia, 1581) which may have been read by Tirso de Molina before he wrote Los Amantes de Teruel. Artieda published an anthology of his verses under the pseudonym of Artemidoro: Discursos, epístolas y epigramas de Artemidoro (Zaragoza, 1605). Some passages in this collection express the writer's hostility to the new drama, and betray a certain pique at the success of his former friend, Lope de Vega. Lope, however, praises Artieda very generously in the Laurel de Apolo (silva ii.).