Soneto de repente (Sudden Sonnet). Lope de Vega.

Spanish practice. Soneto de repente (Sudden Sonnet) - Lope de Vega. Listening and reading comprehension exercise.

https://ia801607.us.archive.org/21/items/soneto-de-repente/Soneto%20de%20repente.mp3

Félix Lope de Vega y Carpio was born on November 25, 1562, and died on August 27, 1635.

He was a Spanish playwright, poet, and novelist. He was one of the main figures in the "Edad de oro" (Golden Age) of Spanish literature.

In Spanish literature, he is only second after Miguel de Cervantes.

A sonnet is a 14-line poem with a variable rhyme scheme originating in Italy and brought to England by Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, earl of Surrey in the 16th century.

The sonnet to Violante was by no means improvised, nor was it conceived and written as an independent poem. It belongs to a comedy, "La niña de plata", published in 1617. In it, a servant, Chacón, recites the sonnet in the third act. The characters who are listening to him on stage comment, literally, that it is "nonsense", given its mocking tone.

Before Lope de Vega, there were sonnets that explained the structure of a sonnet. For example, the Florentine poet Pieraccio Tedaldi (1285-1328) wrote the sonnet "Come dev'essere fatto un sonetto".

In the case of Spain, the Andalusian Baltasar del Alcázar (1530-1606) also wrote a sonnet about the sonnet.

In the poem "Soneto de repente", Lope de Vega makes a habitual composition of a sonnet with two quatrains and two tercets, consonant rhyme in all hendecasyllables. However, despite maintaining the formal unit, the reader can see that the text does not have many feelings. Instead of showing emotion, in each verse, the poet is showing through false modesty the difficulty of a commission that he has, as well as the achievement that he is getting when fulfilling said commission.