mondo del teatro. Lettura diLo fingido verdaderodi Lope de Vega,”in: Lope de Vega,Lo fingido verdadero, ed. M. Cattaneo (cf. note 487), pp. 7–41; Menéndez Pelayo,“Lo fingido verdadero”(cf.
note 489); Elena di Pinto,“‘Entre bestias anda el juego’o la tradición animalística clásica enLo fingido verdaderode Lope de Vega,”Cuadernos de filología clásica: Estudios latinos17 (1999), pp. 199–217; Elida Maria Szarota,“Lope de Vegas Lo fingido verdadero,”in: Szarota,Künstler, Grübler und Rebellen: Studien zum europäischen Märtyrerdrama des 17. Jahrhunderts, Bern/Munich 1967, pp. 24–42; Gustavo Umpierre,“Una comedia metafísica de Lope de Vega:Lo fingido verda-dero,”La Torre28 (1980), pp. 161–192.
495Pedro de Ribadeneyra, “La vida de san Gines el Representante, Martir,”in: Pedro de Ribadeneyra,Flos sanctorum, o libro de las vidas de los santos(1599–1601), 2 vols., Madrid 1624, vol. 2, pp. 359b–361b (see the corresponding reference in Menéndez Pelayo [“Lo fingido verdadero”(cf. note 489), p. 266], which the subsequent research usually refers to). Cf. also the depiction of thevitain the equally popular collection of saints’lives by Alonso de Villegas (“De san Gines representante martyr,”in: Alonso de Villegas,Flos Sanctorum, y Historia gen-eral de la vida y hechos de Iesu Christo, Dios y señor nuestro, y de todos los Santos de que reza y haze fiesta la Yglesia Catolica, Madrid 1588, fols. 120v–121r; there, Genesius is mentioned among“Los santos Extrauagantes,” “[. . .] q[ue] ni son de los contenidos en el Breuiario Romano reformado, ni de los proprios de España”[fol. 62r;]); see, furthermore, the“Passio Sancti Genesii ex mimo martyris,”in: Thierry Ruinart (ed.),Acta primorum Martyrum sincera et selecta, Paris 1689, pp. 283 f.; as well as the corresponding entries in Johann Evangelist Stadler/Franz Joseph Heim/Johann Nepomuk Ginal (eds.), Vollständiges Heiligen-Lexikon:
Oder Lebensgeschichten aller Heiligen, Seligen etc., 5 vols., Hildesheim/New York 1975 (repr. of the edition Augsburg 1858–1882), vol. 2, pp. 371 f.; The Benectine Monks of St. Augustine’s Abbey, Ramsgates (eds.),The Book of Saints: A Dictionary of Servants of God Canonized by the Catholic Church, London 1921, p. 121; on the origin and reception of the legend as a whole, see Bertha von der Lage,Studien zur Genesiuslegende, 2 vols., Berlin 1898–1899.
496Ribadeneyra,“La vida de san Gines”(cf. note 495), p. 360a.
affirmed his new faith. As a result Diocletian had him arrested and tortured, and ultimately beheaded.
497497 Genesius is commemorated on 25th August, but the details given in the sources about his exact year of death differ; according to Ribadeneyra, he died in 303. In point of fact, there are several saints by the name of Genesius being venerated in the Catholic Church (Stadler et al.
[eds.],Heiligen-Lexikon[cf. note 495], vol. 2, pp. 370–373] lists fourteen saints named Genesius [on Saint Genesius of Arles, see below note 582 [‘San Ginés escribano’]) and there are also additional
‘Genesius-figures,’ i.e. actor-martyrs, namely, Gelasius or Gelasinus, Ardalio, Porphyrius, and Philemon. Gelasius/Gelasinus, who is believed to have been martyred around 297 CE in Heliopolis in Phoenicia, and Porphyrius, whose martyrdom is said to have happened around 361 CE under Emperor Julian, according to legend, like Genesius, confessed Christianity all of a sudden while mocking Christian baptism on stage. According to one version, the former is said to have been stoned to death by the people, according to another he was beheaded, and the latter is said to finally have been, after severe torture, executed by decapitation. Ardalio, whose martyrdom is told to have taken place in an unspecified city in Asia Minor during the reign of Maximian around 300 CE, was in the midst of mocking Christian customs on stage, but then while playing a Christian steadfastly professing his faith, he suddenly became a Christian and declared himself as such. He is said to have been burnt alive. (See Von der Lage,Studien zur Genesiuslegende[cf. note 495], vol. 1, pp. 10–18; the entries in Stadler et al. [eds.],Heiligen-Lexikon[cf. note 495], vol. 1, pp. 304 f. [Ardalio]; vol. 4, p. 967 [7. Porphyrius]; vol. 2, p. 364 [6. Gelasius]). The vita of Philemon, which was given a prominent dramatized adaptation in Jakob Bidermann’s playPhilemon Martyr (1610–1620), differs from the above stories, which are obviously very similar to that of the Roman Genesius (Von der Lage assumes that they all originated from an Oriental archetype, that the Roman church transferred the legend to Rome and chose the name Genesius as a symbol of rein-carnation [Studien zur Genesiuslegende(cf. note 495), vol. 1, p. 21 and p. 39]). Nevertheless, I will summarize it here: Philemon’s conversion and martyrdom takes place in Antinoë in Egypt during the Diocletian persecution of Christians. Philemon is paid to disguise himself as the deacon or lec-turer Apollonius and sacrifice to the gods instead of him. Before the governor Arianus, Philemon professes to be a Christian. Arianus does not recognize him at first because of his disguise, and, when he is finally identified by his brother as Philemon, he considers Philemon’s confession to be a well-performed farce. After Philemon continues to profess Christianity, he is condemned by Arianus to torture and finally to death by beheading, as well as Apollonius who in the meantime has been seized and is openly professing his faith. According to the legend, even the praeses Arianus becomes a Christian: he had ordered that Philemon be shot with arrows, but all of them missed, including one that hit Arianus in the eye. This wound was suddenly healed when Arianus entered the tomb of the martyrs whose execution he had ordered, and he promptly converted to Christianity. (Cf. Stadler et al. [eds.],Heiligen-Lexikon[cf. note 495], vol. 4, pp. 884 f. [2. Philemon]
as well as“Martyrium Sanctorum Apollonii & sociorum ejus,”in: Ruinart [ed.],Acta primorum Martyrum sincera[cf. note 495], pp. 539 ff.) At the end of his Genesius narrative, Ribadeneyra men-tions Porphyry and Ardalio as further examples of miraculous conversions of actors, and, further-more, refers to another such case:“Y san Agustin escriuiendo a Alipio, epistola sesenta y siete, cuenta lo q[ue] acontecio a otro farsante, que se dezía Dioscoro, y era gra[n] burlador de los Christianos, y al cabo co[n]la enfermedad de su hija, y otros açotes, se hizo Christiano, y fue sieruo
In Lope ’ s comedia, the life of Genesius only takes up the third act. The vita ’ s core motif, however, the idea that fiction becomes reality, is negotiated in the course of the play in many different ways. It is not only about the transition from lo fingido ( ‘ the feigned ’ ) to lo verdadero ( ‘ the true ’ ),
498but rather, as the title reflects, about the reciprocal dynamics between the two.
499Lo fingido ver-dadero expresses the relativity of the boundary between fiction and truth, ap-pearance and being, illusion and reality; themes that harbor affinities to the discourse of skepticism. This dynamic will be laid out in the summary of the plot that follows. A further analysis will pay special attention to the ‘ position ’ implied in Lope ’ s drama regarding this problem.
The comedia ’ s first act describes Diocleciano ’ s ascent from simple soldier to em-peror. Lope ’ s main source for this element of the plot is commonly assumed to be the Historia imperial y cesárea [Imperial History or Lives of the Roman Emperors] (1545) written by Pedro Mexía.
500The play opens with Marcio, Curio,
del Señor [. . .]”(“La vida de san Gines”[cf. note 495], p. 361b). However, the mentioned“farsante
[. . .] Dioscoro,”whose mysterious conversion Augustine describes in a letter to Alypius, is most
likely not a‘comedian’but a physician, or rather themedicus princeps. The mistake in profession probably results from a corrupt manuscript of the Augustinian letters, more precisely the confu-sion of the termsarchitheaterandarchiater(Latin:‘senior physician’). The corresponding letter printed inPatrologia Latinaas letter 227, not 67 reads:“Archiater etiam Dioscorus christianus fi-delis est, simul gratiam consecutus; audi etiam quemadmodum: [. . .].”, the annotation then reads:
“Edd.,Architheater.At Mss. melioris notae,Archiater,id est medicus princeps”(Augustinus, Ep.
CCXXVII “Augustinus Alypio seni, de Gabiniano recens baptizato, et de Dioscoro miraculis converso ad Christianismum,”in:Patrologiae cursus completus [. . .]: Series Latina, ed. Jacques Paul Migne, 217 vols., Paris 1844–1855, vol. 33 [1865 (1st ed. 1845)]:Sancti Aurelii Augustini, Hipponensis Episcopi, Opera Omnia [II], cols. 1012 f., here col. 1012). Ribadeneyra probably took the reference to the converted‘actor’Dioscorus from theMartyrologium Romanum. There, in the notes provided by Caesar Baronius on April 14 (among others, commemoration day for Saint Ardalion) of the extended edition of 1586 the following sentence can be found:“legimus huius generis celebre exemplum de Dioscoroarchitheatroapud S. Augustinum epistula 67 ad Alipium” (Martyrologium Romanum, ad novam Kalendarii rationem, et Ecclesiasticae historiae veritatem resti-tutum, ed. Cesare Baronio, Rome 1586, p. 166, note E [my italics]; for the reference to this passage in theMartyrologium Romanumand the divergence in the Augustine letter, see Von der Lage, Studien zur Genesiuslegende[cf. note 495], p. 13, n. 18).
498It should be noted that, in the context of thedesengaño-concept expressed at the end of thecomedia, comparable to the final argument ofLa vida es sueño, it is precisely this perspec-tive that is ultimately given.
499This interplay is difficult to express in translations of the title.
500 Pedro Mexía,Historia imperial y cesárea(1545), Antwerp 1552; the chapters on Caro (in the play: Aurelio) and his sons Carino and Numeriano can be found on fols. 126r–127v (“[. . .] vida del emperador Caro solo deste nombre, y de Carino y Numeriano sus hijos, que tambien se llamaron Augustos [. . .]”[fol. 126r]), those on Diocleciano and Maximiano on fols. 127v–131v