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Luis Vélez de Guevara (bornLuis Vélez de Santander) (1 August 1579 – 10 November 1644) was aSpanishdramatist andnovelist.He was born atÉcija and was of Jewish converso descent.[1]After graduating as asizar at theUniversity of Osuna in 1596, he joined the household of Rodrigo de Castro,Cardinal-Archbishop of Seville, and celebrated the marriage ofPhilip III in a poem signed Vélez de Santander, a name which he continued to use until some years later.
It seems he served as a soldier inItaly andAlgiers, returning to Spain in 1602 when he entered the service of the count de Saldaña, and dedicated himself to writing for the stage. He died atMadrid on 10 November 1644.
Velez de Guevara was the author of over four hundred plays, of which the best areReinar despues de morir,La luna de la sierra, andEl diablo está en Cantillana. The playMás pesa el rey que la sangre, which translates into "The King weighs more than blood (kinship)" is based on the episode of theReconquista in which the noblemanAlonso Pérez de Guzmán allows his son to be sacrificed, rather than surrender his King's possession ofTarifa. However, Vélez de Guevara is most widely known as the author ofEl diablo cojuelo (1641, "The Lame Devil" or "The Crippled Devil"), a fantastic novel which suggested toAlain-René Lesage the idea forLe Diable boiteux (1707). The plot presents a rascal student that hides in an astrologer's mansard. He frees a devil from a bottle. As an acknowledgement the devil shows him the apartments of Madrid and the tricks, miseries and mischiefs of their inhabitants. A similar theme was suggested by the magic lenses inLos anteojos de mejor vista (1620–1625) byRodrigo Fernández de Ribera.Charles Dickens refers toEl Diablo cojuelo inThe Old Curiosity Shop, chapter thirty-three.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Guevara, Luis Velez de".Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 12 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
