Fuente Ovejuna (C.1613) is the most famous and frequently performed play by the creator of Spanish theatre, Lope de Vega (1562-1635). Astonishingly for its period, it celebrates the murder in 1476 of a nobleman, the Grand Commander of the Military Order of Calatrava, by the peasants he had oppressed, and their subsequent solidarity under torture. Fuente Ovejuna, however, is less a history lesson or political tract than an optimistic moral fable.