La española, de Cepeda, y Jorge Toledano, de Lope de Vega: moras y cautivos, ecos y reescrituras

The aim of this paper is to underline the numerous similarities between Jorge Toledano, a play written by Lope de Vega in his youth, and La española, composed by Cepeda, a playwright who is nowadays almost unknown, but was relatively famous in the Golden Age. In addition to pointing out their thematic correspondences, which show that the public at the end of the sixteenth century enjoyed Byzantine plots that dealt with captivity in North Africa, the main goal of this study is to suggest a direct relationship between these works. Doubt surrounding the composition date of La española prevents us from affirming which author imitated the other, but the comparative analyse suggests that, in fact, both plays are directly connected. Furthermore, it is likely that La española is one of those plays—often forgotten—that inspired and assisted Lope in his early days as a playwright.