person
Lope de Vega
also: Лопе де Вега
Spanish Golden Age playwright and poet (1562-1635), grouped by Chekhov with Homer and Shakespeare among the great writers of the past who did not shrink from depicting life's "dungheap" while remaining, in Chekhov's view, more morally grounded than fastidious modern authors.
Reading notes
- In Moscow §12 Lope de Vega
The narrator misidentifies the Spanish Golden Age playwright as "some Danish playwright," a deliberate joke at his expense: he trades on grand-sounding foreign names without knowing even their nationality.