Carrying on the 16th/17th-century fun from last-week's nail-biter: Familiar though most of us liberal arts types are with the big names among English dramatists of the Renaissance, but Shakespeare's prolific Spanish contemporary Lope de Vega is less well known. The author of hundreds of still-extant plays (and the putative creator of hundreds more), the author of Fuente Ovejuna (The Sheep Well) he was a child prodigy who wrote Latin at age five, imprisoned for libel (after lampooning the former producer of his plays, who had refused to sanction Lope's relationship with his daughter), a sailor in the Spanish Armada (escaping the general destruction in one of the few ships to return to Spain unscathed), ordained a priest (though he still carried on multiple affairs), and dedicated to self-scourging.
His last words were "All right then, I'll say it: [author's name] makes me sick."
Who did Lope de Vega name as he breathed his dismissive last?
Bonus question: what other famous figure of Spanish heritage said, in his last words, to reporters "Don't let it end like this -- tell them I said something."
First correct answer posted to comments wins a half-sour pickle. Really, half-sours are the best. Why can't you get them in most supermarkets? No Googling or using Amazon's new deal where you can search for the dirty parts of Ulysses. One guess (on each part of the question) per comment, but post as often as you like.
Michael Crichton
Posted by: Scott on December 19, 2003 09:53 AMOh wait, I meant Cervantes.
Posted by: Scott on December 19, 2003 10:00 AMMuy logicalismo -- and wrong.
Posted by: BT on December 19, 2003 10:01 AMHow about . . . Quevedo and Garcilaso de la Vega. Do I have to specify which is the guess and which is the bonus?
Posted by: terry on December 19, 2003 10:25 AMRicky Martin y Jennifer Lopez. Yo soy out, yo. Yo no va. Muchacho platos!
Posted by: bootsy on December 19, 2003 10:30 AMThe bonus answer is Pancho Villa.
The regular answer, uh.... Sophocles?
Scraps nailed the bonus question...but the main event is still in contention. No correct answers yet -- although Terry's Spanish-lit erudition is muy fuerte, we're looking for someone else.
Posted by: BT on December 19, 2003 10:39 AMSomeone has to guess Shakespeare, right?
(Someone apparently once asked Thomas Edison if indeed he had failed 10,000 times in trying to make the light bulb. He said he had not failed, but instead found 10,000 things that didn't work. I like quotes spinning failure. Like Daniel Boone's "I've never been lost, but I have been bewildered for days at a time." One of my all time faves, that 'un.)
Posted by: Scott on December 19, 2003 10:56 AMNot the Bard.
Posted by: BT on December 19, 2003 10:59 AMOvid.
Posted by: Scott on December 19, 2003 11:11 AMBochachachaccio
Posted by: Scraps on December 19, 2003 11:17 AMPlutarch
Posted by: boxjam on December 19, 2003 11:50 AMNo to No-foam Boccaccio; no as well to Plutarch (for whose name I can think of no witticism).
Posted by: BT on December 19, 2003 12:13 PMAh, Jonathan -- il miglior fabbro!
Dante it is. Why Lope de Vega had it in for him, I don't pretend to know. But he wanted it on the record.
Off to the office Christmas party. I leave you all with one last mystery -- what famous woman wrote, in her last letter (not in English) to her even more famous ex-husband, "Mine eyes long to see you only. Farewell!"
Posted by: BT on December 19, 2003 12:42 PMFrida
Posted by: teenidol on December 19, 2003 01:01 PMGavin.
Posted by: bootsy on December 19, 2003 01:37 PMNot Zelda, since I think they were still married when she died. Sounds like maybe a Hemingway ex.
Posted by: Jonathan on December 19, 2003 01:44 PM