This study examines the dramatic function of the beautiful woman in the theater of Lope de Vega (1562-1635). The author uses as a critical framework medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque ideologies of beauty as well as contemporary feminist studies on the «beauty myth» which constructs female beauty as a form of patriarchal oppression against women. Included are a moral and physical portrait of the beautiful woman in Golden Age Spain and a survey of the literary treatment of this topic prior to Lope. The study further considers Lope's presentation of excessive female beauty as a prime agent of social disorder, as a potent threat to male honor, and as an inducement to sexual exploitation.
