Juan Pérez de Montalbán Spanish

Spain

Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

 Catholic priest, dramatist, poet

Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

 and novelist, was born at Madrid

Madrid

Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...

.

At the age of eighteen he became a licentiate in theology

Theology

Theology is the systematic and rational study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truths, or the learned profession acquired by completing specialized training in religious studies, usually at a university or school of divinity or seminary.-Definition:Augustine of Hippo...

, was ordained priest in 1625 and appointed notary to the Inquisition

Spanish Inquisition

The Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition , commonly known as the Spanish Inquisition , was a tribunal established in 1480 by Catholic Monarchs Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile. It was intended to maintain Catholic orthodoxy in their kingdoms, and to replace the Medieval...

. In 1619 he began writing for the stage under the guidance of Lope de Vega

Lope de Vega

Félix Arturo Lope de Vega y Carpio was a Spanish playwright and poet. He was one of the key figures in the Spanish Golden Century Baroque literature...

, who is said to have assisted him in composing El Orfeo en lengua castellana (1624), a poem obviously intended to compete with Jáuregui

Juan Martínez de Jáuregui y Aguilar

Juan Chandra de Jáuregui y Aguilar , Spanish poet, scholar and painter in the Siglo de Oro....

's Orfeo, published earlier in the same year. The prose tales in Sucesos y prodigios de amor (1624) and Para todos (1632) were very popular.

Montalbán's father, a publisher at Madrid, issued a pirated edition of Quevedo

Francisco de Quevedo

Francisco Gómez de Quevedo y Santibáñez Villegas was a Spanish nobleman, politician and writer of the Baroque era. Along with his lifelong rival, Luis de Góngora, Quevedo was one of the most prominent Spanish poets of the age. His style is characterized by what was called conceptismo...

's Buscón, which roused an angry controversy. The violence of these polemic

Polemic

A polemic is a variety of arguments or controversies made against one opinion, doctrine, or person. Other variations of argument are debate and discussion...

s, the strain of overwork, and the death of Lope de Vega so affected Montalbán that he became insane; he died at Madrid on the 25th of June 1638. His last work was a eulogistic biography of Lope de Vega in the Fama póstuma (1636).

His plays, published in 1635–1638, are all in the manner of that great dramatist, and were represented with much success, but, with the exception of Los Amantes de Teruel, are little more than clever improvizations. A libellous attack on Quevedo, entitled El Tribunal de la justa venganza (1635), is often ascribed to him. Aurora and the Prince, from the Spanish, a translation by Thomas Stanley

Thomas Stanley (author)

Sir Thomas Stanley was an English author and translator.-Life:He was born in Cumberlow, Hertfordshire, the son of Sir Thomas Stanley of Cumberlow, Hertfordshire and his wife, Mary Hammond. Mary was the cousin of Richard Lovelace, and Stanley was educated in company with the son of Edward Fairfax,...

, (1647)