Note 1095 — ACTO SEGUNDO

1089. Filis. In Greek mythology Phyllis, disappointed because her lover, Demophon, did not return at the time appointed for their marriage, put an end to her life. According to one account she was changed after death into an almond-tree without leaves. But when Demophon, on his return, embraced the tree, it put forth leaves, so much was it affected by the presence of the lover. To the mythological Phyllis, however, Lope is indebted only for the name. To him "Filis" was a more material being in the person of Elena Osorio, daughter of a theatrical manager and a married woman. During the early part of the period 1585-1590 he dedicated to her some of his most beautiful love-ballads, and in the latter part, when he turned against her and was exiled from Madrid and Castile, he continued to address poems to her, but now filled with bitter complaints. (See Introduction.) The fact that he mentions her name here in a play written in the later years of his life is of interest; either he wrote the sonnet in his earlier years and used it here, or it would seem that the poet's mind reverts to his youthful follies. But in one of the last works written just before his death Lope speaks of his daughter, Antonia Clara, under the name of "Filis," which has given rise to some confusion. "Phyllis," moreover, is a very common name in pastoral poems in the 16th and 17th centuries.