Unlike Cervantes, his contemporary, Lope de Vega has achieved only a peripheral footing in the English-speaking world. This seems strange, since he has something of the range and variety of Shakespeare and can also compare well with him purely as a poet. The plays translated here are Fuente Ovejuna, The Knight from Olmedo, and Punishment Without Revenge. The first is a remarkable drama in which an entire village is put on trial for the killing of a tyrannous governor, and ultimately gains a royal pardon. The second has a powerful, rather sinister nocturnal atmosphere, and the third play is a drama of marital infidelity. Gwynne Edwards puts all three into blank verse, instead of the more customary prose which usually flattens Lope's lively, sometimes impassioned style.