Francisco Agustín Tárrega

Francisco Agustín Tárrega (Segorbe, c.1554 - id., 1602) was a Spanish playwright of the generation before Lope de Vega. He was canon of the Cathedral of Valencia from 1584 and regular member of the Academy of the Nocturnos, famous literary tertulia, with the position of consiliario of the same one and the nickname of "Miedo". He is a playwright of such quality as he was Guillen de Castro. He was not a disciple of Lope de Vega, for this one was something younger than him and Tárrega had already elaborated the essential of its dramatic trajectory when both agreed in the city of the Turia in 1588. To Tárrega they attracted more the freedoms of the imagination that the rigidity of the neo-Aristotelian preceptists engaged in curtailing the tragedy; for that reason it approached to the sense of the intrigue that had the Italians. His ten comedies preserved confirm it: The meadow of Valencia, The feigned husband, The siege of Rhodes, The persecuted Amalthea, The loyal blood of the mountaineers of Navarre, The exchanged fortunes and a fortunate tournament; The siege of Pavia and prison of the King of France, The Constant Duchess, The Founding of the Order of Our Lady of Mercy and The Favorable Enemy, the latter quoted with praise by Cervantes in Don Quixote (I, 48), as well as same author in the prologue of his Eight Comedies and eight entremeses for his "discretion and innumerable concepts". He is also credited with Los moriscos de Hornachos (ed. Bourland, Chicago, 1904). As you can see, he cultivates national and historical themes that merge with amorous plots, except for the costumbrista El prado de Valencia. In love stories there is no psychological process, but a series of topics that are beginning to become popular.

The oldest comedies for Rinaldo Froldi are the very novelescas The constant duchess, The fake husband and The exchanged lots, although Merimée thinks that is also early The meadow of Valencia, comedy of customs that is already approaching the theater of Lope de Vega. In the latter, historical plot and amorous argument are fused.

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