perro del hortelano

The title refers to a famous Spanish saying: a dog in a garden who neither eats the vegetables nor lets anyone else eat them. This is Countess Diana in Lope de Vega's masterpiece: she has fallen in love with her own secretary, Teodoro, but her aristocratic pride forbids her from claiming him while her jealous fury forbids her from releasing him to another. What follows is a dazzling comedy of errors, servants conspiring behind their masters' backs, identities mistaken and restored, and dialogue that crackles with the wit of a civilization at the height of its brilliance. Yet beneath the farcical surface runs something darker and more modern than any contemporary audience expects: a precise, unflinching portrait of how pride and desire collude to create a prison of one's own making. Written in 1618, this play remains astonishingly alive because it understands something about the human heart that hasn't changed in four hundred years. For readers who love Shakespeare, Molière, or any comedy that is also a kind of cruelty.