Lope de Rueda

Lope de Rueda , 1510?-1565, Spanish dramatist. A precursor of the Golden Age of Spanish literature, Rueda was an actor and a manager as well as a playwright. He is said to have created the genre known as pasos (short farces), noted for their use of rustic language and ordinary subjects. One of these is Paso de las aceitunas [incident of the olives]. His work was published posthumously.

Rueda, Lope de (c.1505–65), Spain's first actor-manager and popular dramatist, whose plays were performed by his own company in squares and courtyards throughout the country, as well as in palaces and great houses. He was much admired by Cervantes, particularly for his playing of comic rascals and fools, and his reputation led the great commedia dell'arte actor Ganassa to visit Spain with his troupe in 1574. Rueda's dialogue, mainly in prose, is natural, easy, and idiomatic, with a strong sense of the ridiculous and a happy satirizing of the manners of his day. He was the originator of the paso, or comic interlude, of which the best is Las aceitunas (The Olives). Two of his plays are based on Italian originals which were also used by Shakespeare—Eufemia, like Cymbeline, deriving from Boccaccio, and Los engañados, like Twelfth Night, from the anonymous Gl'ingannti (1531).