El valor de la amistad para Lope de Vega: una huella viva de la Antigüedad grecolatina

Abstract

Between the poets of the Golden Age, Lope de Vega praised like no other the value of friendship, as one of the highest feelings of the human soul. Either in his private life or his literary work, he defended friendship as a perfect love, following Aristotle, between good men, equals in condition and similar in virtues, and determined to achieve the good for the friend rather than for themselves. However, his concept of friendship goes far beyond the aristotelic Ethics, because we found traces of Cicero, Saint Augustine and the Holy Scriptures. In this article we review the different sources that build his personal view through his works, so we can fully understand why friendship was so important for him.