Lope de Vega, Tobacco, and Cuckoldry: Two Notes on Polemics and Mock Poetry in the "Rimas de Tomé de Burguillos" (1634)

Abstract

The present article examines two complex passages in Lope de Vega’s "Rimas de Tomé de Burguillos", respective and elusive examples of polemics and mock poetry, or, rather, of polemical and non-polemical mock poetry. In the first, included in La Gatomaquia, we study
the meaning of a malicious reference to the poet Anastasio Pantaleón de Ribera, already dead in 1634. In the second, sonnet 127 (129 in Carreño’s edition), we show the satirical target of another sarcastic reference, an allusion that gives the poem its burlesque tone, parallel to that of many texts in the book. In order to achieve our objective, we use a textual
commentary methodology. After  reviewing the critics’ opinions on the passages in question, and in particular their editors’, we present ours, which illustrate the passages conceptismo
by contrasting them with several loci in Lope’s works and in other writers of the time.