One of Spain’s most prolific authors, Lope de Vega had a long and complete life, most of it spent in Madrid. He wrote approximately 3,000 sonnets, 3 novels, 4 novellas, 9 epics, 3 didactic poems, and several hundred comedies. Lope is second only to Cervantes regarding his importance during the Golden Age of Spanish literature, and he’s most famous for modernizing the theatre of the 17th century and ridding it of the strict Aristotelian structure. This new theatre genre was called “new comedy” or “Spanish comedy.”