Background
Juan was born on July 14, 1468.
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Juan Del Encina
Edit ProfileEducation
Juan studied at the University of Salamanca with the humanist Antonio de Nebrija.
Career
Juan was a Spanish lyric poet, musician, and playwright, remembered primarily as the father of the Spanish theater. Afterward Juan entered the service of the Duke of Alba (1492), in whose palace his first plays were presented. Moving on to Rome, he became choirmaster to Pope Leo X. In 1519 he was ordained, and in Jerusalem while on a pilgrimage first conducted Mass. He died in LeónLeon in 1529.
Spanish drama to all intents and purposes begins with Encina. PlácidaPlacida y Vitoriano, with mythological characters and with exaltation of human love, reveals the first flush of the Spanish Renaissance. An explicit rejection of medieval values occurs in Christino and Febea, in which a hermit tempted by love abandons his lonely calling. To the delight of his courtly audience, he put the rustic dialect of his native province in the mouths of the shepherds of Bethlehem, and, without a clear line of demarcation, he merged classic Arcadia with the medieval pastourelle. In the Auto del Repelón,Repelon, however, picaresque elements are introduced. Encina's lyric poetry, first collected in his 1496 Cancionero, also reveals that sense for the popular and that ability to create from within folk tradition which align him with Juan Ruiz, Lope de Vega, and ultimately with GarcíaGarcia Lorca.
