Lope de Vega

Félix Lope de Vega y Carpio was born 25 November 1562 and spent the next seventy-three years pouring out an almost implausible volume of work: three novels, four novellas, nine epic poems, around 500 stageplays, 3,000 sonnets. Alongside Pedro Calderón de la Barca and Tirso de Molina, he renewed Spanish theatre when it turned into mass culture, defining the characteristics of Spanish Baroque drama with what scholars call great insight into the human condition. He befriended the writer Francisco de Quevedo and attended the Medrano Academy from 1616 to 1622; he also made an arch-enemy of dramatist Juan Ruiz de Alarcón. The sheer output earned him the envy of Cervantes and Luis de Góngora, and centuries later the admiration of Goethe. In the literature of Spain, he's considered second only to Cervantes. He died 27 August 1635, having left the Spanish Golden Age significantly more crowded than he found it.