Version Used: Edwards, Gwynne, translator. “The Knight from Olmedo.” Three Major Plays, by Lope de Vega, Oxford University Press, 2008, pp. 83–167.
The adage love can overcome all problems has, over time, been rivaled by the less idealistic but perhaps more accurate love is not enough to fix all problems. In his tragicomedy The Knight from Olmedo, Lope de Vega presents a yet another claim: sometimes, love is the problem—and people are to blame. It is no secret that love inspires strong emotions, for better or for worse. The Knight from Olmedo explores the “for worse” side of this truth, that both love and the prospect of it can drive humans to emotional extremities. However, while love possesses powerful influence, it is not inherently destructive. Rather, the danger of love stems from its distortion, the problematic human glorification of it. Such is the case for Rodrigo—the poor fool who, hopelessly in love with Ines, turns mad, kills Alonso, then meets his own demise. In juxtaposing quixotic depictions of love with Rodrigo’s less fortunate example, Lope de Vega suggests that the romanticized prospect of love desensitizes people to the reality of it, as people become so consumed with want that they convince themselves that they need and can get. Thus, while love itself is not a villain, the authority with which characters choose to imbue it makes love the singular most destructive force in this play.
The Knight of Olmedo begins with the establishment of love as a positive, influential force in order to contextualize Rodrigo’s insistence on achieving love for himself. The very first line, spoken by Alonso, venerates Love: “Let no one speak the name of Love / Who does not eagerly respond to it” (Act I, pp. 83, lines 1-2). The capitalization of the “L” in “Love” not only elevates love’s status from common noun to proper noun but also names it, as if to personify love as a prominent presence. The fact that love’s authority warrants—demands, even—that love be dignified with an eager response also suggests its elite nature. “And yet,” Alonso continues, “who is there on this earth / Of ours whom it has left untouched?” (Act I, pp. 83, lines 3-4). With this, Alonso makes the secondary point that Love is not just powerful but also ubiquitous; to love and be loved is both desirable and expected. If someone has not experienced love, then, this lacking makes them different from everyone else on earth in a negative way. In theory, the proliferation of something as profound and beautiful as love should be a positive phenomenon.
However, it is exactly this painting of love in such a positive light that gives love the potential to be dangerous. People, allured by the prospect of this wonderful notion, become desperate for it, become expedient to attain it. In addition, the claim that everyone has experienced love is not only objectively untrue, but it surrounds situations of loveless-ness—including situations of unrequited love, as Alonso remarks, love “only felt by one…falls far short of…perfection”—with stigma, unfairly outcasting those who have not experienced mutual love (Act I, pp. 83, lines 24-25). By opening the play with enumerations about love’s power and prevalence, de Vega establishes a set of ideas about love that Alonso believes. Idealistic, far-fetched, and untrue as these ideas may be, the fact that the protagonist subscribes to them awards them a certain ethos within the context of the play; it can be assumed that Alonso’s beliefs are not starkly in contrast to those of his society. From this, we can draw the conclusion that Alonso’s beliefs about love are at least somewhat commonly held, justifying his reliability as a point of reference. This information enables us to understand the source of Rodrigo’s extreme desperation to experience mutual love and avoid loveless-ness.
De Vega builds on this contextualization, again through Alonso, by foreshadowing the potential dangers of giving love too much authority over oneself, which Rodrigo unfortunately does. Expanding on his earlier comments about love’s immense influence, Alonso suggests that feelings of desire, inseparable from love, overcome his ability to control his actions: “Desire is / The master of my will” (Act I, pp. 84, lines 44-45). Having any character openly surrender themselves to love at the onset of the play suffices to convey that love is appealing enough, powerful enough, and perhaps intoxicating enough to influence judgment and agency. Having the protagonist openly surrender himself to love justifies this surrender—implying that even people of relatively strong character are not immune to love’s charm—and even glorifies it to an extent by lending surrender the ethos of the hero. Again, assuming that Alonso’s views reflect those of his society, the common impression of love thus dictates that it is both excusable and potentially admirable to give oneself to the powerful influence of love. These prevalent beliefs are most likely the beliefs to which Rodrigo is exposed and subscribed. As Rodrigo’s own misfortune later suggests, however, these ideals are misleading and potentially dangerous; love’s potency (and people’s subsequent surrender to it) can be its catastrophic side-effect.
With this establishment of how characters understand love in mind, we can now examine how that misguided understanding unfolds in Rodrigo’s example, ultimately proving that love is the most lethal force in this play. Rodrigo is determined to be loved, though his chances at success are complicated by the fact that his love interest despises him. Ines disdainfully mentions that Rodrigo has “been [her] suitor” “For two / Years now” and “His looks and flattering words turn [her] / To ice” (Act I, pp. 89, lines 181-184). Ines’s harsh rejection, understandably, is a problem for Rodrigo, due to the fact that he loves her. Moreover, this long-standing problem of unrequited love is not one that Rodrigo himself can solve, as he cannot control how Ines perceives him. Even his best efforts are regarded with disgust.
Instead of giving up on Ines and making peace with the reality that she will never return his feelings, Rodrigo becomes increasingly obsessed with acquiring Ines’s love. “The more / Her cruel disdain attempts to kill / My love,” he laments to Fernando, “the more it burns” (Act I, pp. 102, lines 523-525). The parallelism of “The more…the more” indicates a direct relationship between Ines’s disdain and Rodrigo’s love. The disjoint nature of Ines’s and Rodrigo’s respective desires is further emphasized by the juxtaposition of Ines’s “disdain” and Rodrigo’s “love.” Eventually, it becomes undeniable, even to Rodrigo, that his “cause is lost” (Act II, pp. 123, lines 395). Still, Rodrigo does not give up on Ines; he continues to fixate on her but also directs his attention towards resenting Alonso. Given that Ines had been rejecting Rodrigo before even meeting Alonso, Alonso is not responsible for the asymmetrical nature of Rodrigo’s love in any way. Yet, Rodrigo decides that he ought to kill Alonso.
Most likely, Rodrigo cannot cope with the notion that mutual love does not occur to everyone and thus feels the need to blame something tangible. Alonso, as Ines’s current love interest, is an easy scapegoat. Rodrigo’s earliest remark about his jealousy is that he “observed [Alonso] carefully…prompted by this jealous heart” (Act II, pp. 123, lines 377-378). In the next act, he, increasingly passionate, entertains the intrusive thought of Alonso’s death: “I’m so jealous…I long to see him dead” (Act III, pp. 146, lines 175-176). Soon after, he is pushed to a breaking point, “driven mad with jealousy” (Act III, pp. 146, lines 183). While Rodrigo repeatedly claims that he wants to murder Alonso out of jealousy, this jealousy stems directly from his obsession with achieving mutual love: he would not view Alonso as an obstacle to mutual love if he did not believe there was, in fact, mutual love waiting for him on the other side. Two whole years of rejection from Ines—even without Alonso’s influence—should have made it clear to Rodrigo that mutual love (at least from Ines) is not written in the stars for him. Yet, he still clings to the prospect of love because he has internalized the aforementioned notions surrounding it: that love is a powerful force of good, that everyone should be in mutual love, that to give oneself entirely to love is excusable and admirable. Thus, the murder is the result of Rodrigo’s self-deception regarding the possibility of mutual love. The crescendo of Rodrigo’s jealousy from Act II to Act III, in addition to that jealousy’s existence, furthers the claim of love’s destructive potential. Not only is the effect of love on Rodrigo strong, but it is parasitic, viral in the way it increasingly (as opposed to stagnantly) corrupts his morality, mental stability, and judgment.
In perpetuating a culture of and harboring extreme desires for mutual love, the characters in this play create another dangerous by-product: the fear of loveless-ness. Everyone wants love; everyone wants to believe that they can have it. Rodrigo is no exception. When people desperately desire love, they are willing to do almost anything for it. Conversely, when people desperately fear loveless-ness, they are willing to do anything to avoid it. One could reasonably speculate, then, that this second motivating force of fear rivals, or maybe even surpasses, the first motivating force of desire. The way Rodrigo phrases it himself is that he “cannot stand” or “endure” the reality that Ines loves Alonso and therefore does not return Rodrigo’s love (Act III, pp. 140, lines 26-28). The fact that he, on an existential level, cannot bear this reality indicates that he does not just want to believe that there is hope for himself; he needs to. Consequently, when the possibility of living without mutual love becomes increasingly likely, as is the case, Rodrigo resorts to self-deception as a solution. This deception allows him to avoid a painful confrontation with reality but also renders him delusional. Delusion and resentment, albeit misaimed resentment, make a deadly combination.
It is worth noting that Rodrigo is an otherwise non-deceptive character. Rodrigo does not lie to anyone else. In fact, he is exceedingly transparent. He reveals his inner thoughts to Fernando, even though they convey that he is vulnerable and awkward: “This sword of mine, quite useless…I [feel] embarrassed” (Act III, pp. 139, line 3-4). He reveals to Alonso that he intends to kill him dishonorably, even though this revelation exposes Rodrigo as a coward: “I come to kill / You, not to challenge you!” (Act III, pp. 159, lines 544-545). All this goes to show that desperation for love can put an otherwise honest man into a perpetual state of deception, specifically self-deception. Rodrigo fools himself and lets himself be fooled into believing that killing Alonso will fix his primary problem, his unrequited love for Ines. Rodrigo himself even admits that his idea is mad and uncharacteristic of himself, but “Love has made [him] so!” (Act II, pp. 125, line 439). With this, Rodrigo concedes that he has surrendered his judgment to love but also suggests that love is the one in control, not himself. It is, perhaps, tempting to blame or ridicule Rodrigo for succumbing to these desires. However, we must recall that surrendering oneself to love is both a socially acceptable and even admirable belief. Though extreme in his interpretation, Rodrigo is actually thinking in accordance with common perceptions of love. It is these perceptions which imbue love with the authority to reign over judgment. It is these perceptions which render love dangerous.
The play supposedly ends on a positive note, at least leaving the reader with a sense of schadenfreude, when the King quickly declares, “Cut off their evil heads” to punish Rodrigo and his accomplices for killing Alonso (Act III, pp. 167, line 754). But, is this not a tragedy as well? A man so desperate for mutual love that he willingly deludes himself just so that he can cope with being alive.
In exploring the alternatives to successful mutual love through Rodrigo, Lope de Vega presents us with reality—that love is not always glorious and mutual—and reveals the dangers of our refusal to confront that truth. The bane is not always the obstacle standing in the way of love. The bane is the insistence that the love is there, even when it is not. Humans treat loveless-ness as if it is something to fear, when the most fearful thing about loveless-ness is the measures to which humans will desperately go in order to avoid it. It is these human actions, rooted in delusions about love, that deal severe and lasting damage: self-delusion, loss of sense, moral degradation, wasted time, literal death. Love is not inherently destructive. People make it so.