• Overview
• Staging information
• Translations
• Sample translations
• Production history

Titles

English title: The Dog in the Manger
Date written: sometime between 1613 and 1615
First publication date: 1618
Keywords: morality > honour, identity > class/social standing, identity > hierarchy, family > marriage, family > duty, ideology > honour, love > relationships, love > desire, Social > Hierarchy
Genre and type: comedy

Title information

The title comes from a proverb, also found in the form of a fable from Aesop, in which a dog will neither eat, nor let other animals eat. There are several versions of the proverb/fable, but in most of them a dog won’t let another dog or animal eat a bone or other food that he himself cannot or will not eat. The parallel is easily made with the Countess Diana, who will neither take Teodoro for her own husband, nor let Marcela marry him. See Dixon’s introduction to Lope de Vega 1981: 9-14.

• Vega, Lope de. 1981. El perro del hortelano, ed. Victor Dixon. London, Tamesis (in Spanish)

Pitch

A noble Countess falls in love with her low-born secretary, sparking a bitter conflict between love and honour. Hailed as one of Lope’s finest comedies, the play offers both laughter and tears through its quick plot twists, comic timing and painful truths of the heart.

Synopsis

Diana, Countess of Belflor, is furious because a man has crossed through her rooms in the middle of the night. Believing it to be one of her ardent suitors, she wakes up her household to find out who it is. Interrogating her maidservants, she learns that the man was Diana’s own secretary, Teodoro, visiting another servant of the house, Marcela. Diana promises to see the two wed, but secretly reveals that she too is in love with Teodoro, although her high rank prevents her from acting on her feelings for the lower-born secretary. Diana contrives several tricks to reveal her love for him discreetly, including writing a love letter on behalf of a ‘friend’ and asking Teodoro for his assistance with the reply, and feigning a fall and taking Teodoro’s bare hand to help her up. These breaches of protocol intrigue the secretary, who is betrothed to Marcela; he decides to see what Diana’s intentions towards him are, just in case he can advance his station. He is caught between his ambition and his love of Marcela, and he vacillates between the two women.

The second act is a whirlwind of comic plot twists, as Diana repeatedly changes her mind about whether to give in to her feelings for the low-born Teodoro, risking her honour. Her noble suitors, the Marquis Ricardo and her cousin, the Count Federico, compete for her hand, and she declares she has chosen Ricardo, throwing Teodoro’s life into chaos. He says he’ll return to Marcela, asking Diana not to be ‘the dog in the manger’ from Aesop’s fable, who would neither eat nor let anyone else eat. Hearing his intentions with Marcela, Diana’s jealousy gets the better of her and she strikes Teodoro in the face, causing him to bleed. She asks him for his bloody handkerchief, offering money in return. She meets with her suitor, Federico, leaving the bloodied Teodoro hopeful that her violent anger may reveal some passionate desire, ‘no less violent’.

By act 3 the noble suitors have figured out Diana’s relationship with the secretary and wish to have him killed, both to remove him as a rival and to protect her family from the disgrace of her dishonourable desire for a servant. The noblemen hire a thug they believe to be a professional hitman to do the job, but it is really Tristán, Teodoro’s lackey. Tristán ‘agrees’ to kill Teodoro, immediately revealing the nobles’ plan to his master. Teodoro decides to leave the situation behind and sail away for Spain. Marcela asks Diana’s permission to go with him as his wife, but Diana refuses, offering to marry her to another servant, Fabio. Marcela’s heart is broken. Tristán, meanwhile, hatches a plan to bring the Countess and Teodoro together, feigning Teodoro’s long-lost nobility. He seeks out an old grandee of the city, the Count Ludovico, whose son, lost in a shipwreck many years ago, was named Teodoro. Tristán convinces the old man that this Teodoro is his son come back after all these years, and Count Ludovico makes plans to accept him into his noble family. The noble suitors are undeterred in their plan to kill Teodoro, despite his new-found pedigree, and Tristán raises his fee for the killing. Teodoro tells Diana of the lackey’s deception of Count Ludovico in pretending Teodoro’s his son, but she (perhaps surprisingly) says that his fake nobility is all the ‘cover’ she needs to marry him, and their wedding is arranged for that night. As Tristán is the only person who knows Teodoro’s new rank is a fake, Diana suggests having him killed, but he defends himself and is married to Dorotea and kept close at hand instead. Poor Marcela is married to Fabio and, as Ludovico celebrates the return of his son and Diana and Teodoro celebrate their wedding, the play ends. Teodoro asks the audience to keep his false nobility a secret, lest it all come ‘tumbling out’ (trans. Johnston [Lope de Vega 2004]).

Sources

The critical jury is still out over the precise source of this play, if the titular proverb is not enough inspiration to provide a source. Kohler proffered and then rejected Bandello’s 45th novella as a source; in that story a queen shows favour to a secretary, although they do not develop a romantic relationship, despite the secretary’s love for the queen. However, Dixon also makes connections between Lope’s play and Bandello’s 20th novella, which served as the source for Webster’s Duchess of Malfi. Lope’s earlier play, El mayordomo de la duquesa de Amalfi (The Duchess of Amalfi’s Steward), was a somewhat darker story, which ends with the tragic deaths of the steward, the duchess and their children. Dixon has suggested that El perro del hortelano could be ‘interpreted as a retelling of the earlier, premarital part of that story’, a ‘light-hearted play’ that is ‘often shadowed by hints that things may after all turn out tragically’ (Lope de Vega 1981: 16-17). See also Kohler’s introduction to Lope de Vega 1951.

• Vega, Lope de. 1951. El perro del hortelano, ed. Eugène Kohler. 2nd edn. Paris, Belles Lettres (in Spanish)

• Vega, Lope de. 1981. El perro del hortelano, ed. Victor Dixon. London, Tamesis (in Spanish)

Critical response

The play is one of Lope’s best comedies, poignant in its semi-tragic treatment of the broken-hearted Marcela and love’s fierce pull on Diana and Teodoro. It is amongst the most frequently studied comedias in the canon. Critics hailed Boswell’s RSC production (trans. Johnston) as a great success, both in the UK and on its tour to Madrid. See the reviews by Ashworth, Cavendish and Clapp (all 2004).

• Ashworth, Pat. 2004. ‘The Dog in the Manger.’ Review of The Dog in the Manger by Lope de Vega. Trans. David Johnston. Dir. Laurence Boswell. Royal Shakespeare Company, Stratford-upon-Avon. Stage. 29 April

• Cavendish, Dominic. 2004. ‘How the RSC gave Spain a Lesson in Teatro.’ Review of The Dog in the Manger by Lope de Vega. Trans. David Johnston. Dir. Laurence Boswell. Teatro Español, Madrid. www.telegraph.co.uk. 1 November

• Clapp, Susannah. 2004. ‘Putting Shakespeare in his place.’ Review of The Dog in the Manger by Lope de Vega. Trans. David Johnston. Dir. Laurence Boswell. Royal Shakespeare Company, Stratford-upon-Avon. Observer. 25 April. Theatre Section

Editions

• Vega, Lope de. 1970. El perro del hortelano, ed. A. David Kossoff. Madrid, Castalia

• Vega, Lope de. 1981. El perro del hortelano, ed. Victor Dixon. London, Tamesis

• Vega, Lope de. 1991. El perro del hortelano, ed. Antonio Carreño. Madrid, Espasa Calpe

• Vega, Lope de. 2003. El perro del hortelano, ed. Mauro Armiño. Madrid, Cátedra

Useful readings and websites

• Antonucci, Fausta. 2003. ‘El perro del hortelano y La moza de cántaro: un caso de auto-reescritura lopiana’, Criticón, 87-88-89, 47-57 (in Spanish)

• Ashworth, Pat. 2004. ‘The Dog in the Manger.’ Review of The Dog in the Manger by Lope de Vega. Trans. David Johnston. Dir. Laurence Boswell. Royal Shakespeare Company, Stratford-upon-Avon. Stage. 29 April

• Cavendish, Dominic. 2004. ‘How the RSC gave Spain a Lesson in Teatro.’ Review of The Dog in the Manger by Lope de Vega. Trans. David Johnston. Dir. Laurence Boswell. Teatro Español, Madrid. www.telegraph.co.uk. 1 November

• Clapp, Susannah. 2004. ‘Putting Shakespeare in his place.’ Review of The Dog in the Manger by Lope de Vega. Trans. David Johnston. Dir. Laurence Boswell. Royal Shakespeare Company, Stratford-upon-Avon. Observer. 25 April. Theatre Section

• Dixon, Victor. 1995. ‘El vergonzoso en palacio y El perro del hortelano: ¿Comedias gemelas?’, Estudios, 189-90, 73-86 (in Spanish)

• Fischer, Susan L. 1989. ‘“Some Are Born Great … and Some Have Greatness Thrust upon Them:” Comic Resolution in El perro del hortelano and Twelfth Night’, Hispania, 72, 78-86

• Fischer, Susan L. 2005. ‘“Some are Born Great” and “Have Greatness Thrust Upon Them”: Staging Lope’s El perro del hortelano on the Boards of the Bard’, Comedia Performance, 2,1, 9-68

• Fischer, Susan L. 2009. ‘Lope and the Politics of Truth: The Dog in the Manger (El perro del hortelano)’. In In Reading Performance: Spanish Golden Age Theatre and Shakespeare on the Modern Stage, pp. 220-44. Woodbridge, Tamesis

• Friedman, Edward H. 2000. ‘Sign Language: The Semiotics of Love in Lope’s El perro del hortelano’, Hispanic Review, 68.1, 1-20

• Johnston, David. 2007. ‘Historicizing the Spanish Golden Age: Lope’s El perro del hortelano and El Caballero de Olmedo in English’. In The Spanish Golden Age in English: Perspectives on Performance. Eds. Catherine Boyle and David Johnston with Janet Morris, pp. 49-60. London, Oberon

• Larson, Donald R. 1977. The Honor Plays of Lope de Vega. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press

• McGrady, Donald. 1999. ‘Fuentes, fecha y sentido de El perro del hortelano’, Anuario Lope de Vega, 5, 151-66 (in Spanish)

• Rothberg, Irving P. 1977. ‘The Nature of the Solution in El perro del hortelano’, Bulletin of the Comediantes, 29, 2, 86-96

• Sage, J. W. 1973. ‘The Context of Comedy: Lope de Vega’s El perro del hortelano and Related Plays’. In Studies in Spanish Literature of the Golden Age Presented to Edward M. Wilson, ed. R. O. Jones, pp. 247-66. London, Tamesis

• Torres, Isabel. 2004. ‘“Pues no entiendo tus palabras,/ y tus bofetones siento”: Linguistic Subversion in Lope de Vega’s El perro del hortelano’, Hispanic Research Journal, 5.3, 197-212 (in Spanish)

• Trueblood, Alan S. 1964. ‘Role-playing and the Sense of Illusion in Lope de Vega’, Hispanic Review, 32, 305-18

• Unknown author. 1979. ‘La Compañía Española de Teatro Clásico representa El perro del hortelano, en El Escorial’. Review of El perro del hortelano by Lope de Vega. Dir. Manuel Canseco. El País. 1 July. Cultura Section (in Spanish)

• Vega, Lope de. 1951. El perro del hortelano, ed. Eugène Kohler. 2nd edn. Paris, Belles Lettres (in Spanish)

• Wardropper, Bruce W. 1967. ‘Comic Illusion: Lope de Vega’s El perro del hortelano’, Kentucky Romance Quarterly, 14, 101-11

• Wheeler, Duncan. 2007. ‘We Are Living in a Material World and I Am a Material Girl: Diana, Countess of Belflor, Materialised on the Page, Stage and Screen’, Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, 84, 3, 267-86

Entry written by Kathleen Jeffs. Last updated on 4 March 2012.

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