Note 205 — Chapter XIII
Reading edition
This curious passage is in the Epistle, or Metro Lyrico, to D. Luis de Haro, Obras Sueltas, Tom. IX. p. 379:—
Ni mi fortuna muda Ver en tres lustros de mi edad primera Con la espada desnuda Al bravo Portugues en la Tercera, Ni despues en las naves Españolas Del mar Ingles los puertos y las olas.
I do not quite make out how this can have happened in 1577; but the assertion seems unequivocal. Schack (Geschichte der dramatischen Literatur in Spanien, Berlin, 1845, 8vo, Tom. II. p. 164) thinks the fifteen years here referred to are intended to embrace the fifteen years of Lope’s life as a soldier, which he extends from Lope’s eleventh year to his twenty-sixth,—1573 to 1588. But Schack’s ground for this is a mistake he had himself previously made in supposing the Dedication of the “Gatomachia” to be addressed to Lope himself; whereas it is addressed to his son, named Lope, who served, at the age of fifteen, under the Marquis of Santa Cruz, as we shall see hereafter. The “Cupid in arms,” therefore, referred to in this Dedication, fails to prove what Schack thought it proved; and leaves the “fifteen years” as dark a point as ever. See Schack pp. 157, etc.