SOURCE: “Tirso de Molina and the Other Lopistas,” in Theatre in Spain, 1490-1700, Cambridge University Press, 1989, pp. 115-39.

In the following excerpt, McKendrick overviews the plays of de Molina.

Tirso de Molina's world, by contrast with Lope's, is a world peopled by the unusual and the extreme, even bizarre. Tirso de Molina was the pseudonym of a Mercedarian monk called Fray Gabriel Téllez (c. 1584-1648).¹ The greatest of Lope's disciples, although their personal relationship was neither close nor particularly good, he was writing plays by the mid-1600s and within a few years had become one of Spain's major dramatists. He more or less dominated the Spanish stage along with Lope in the early 1620s. This period of maximum productivity coincided with his transfer to the house of his order in Madrid at a time of great intellectual activity. Góngora, Quevedo, the ageing Lope and the...