Tirso de Molina (March 24, 1579 - March 12, 1648) was a Spanish Baroque dramatist, poet and a Roman Catholic monk.

Originally Gabriel Téllez, he was born in Madrid. He studied at Alcalá de Henares, joined the Order of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mercy on November 4, 1600, and entered the Monastery of San Antolín at Guadalajara, Spain on January 21, 1601. He was ordained a priest by 1610.

He had been writing plays for ten years when he was sent by his superiors on a mission to the West Indies in 1615; returning to Europe in 1617, he resided at the Mercedarian monastery in Madrid, took part in the proceedings of the Academía poetica de Madrid, founded by Sebastian Francisco de Medrano, competed in the literary tournaments then in vogue, and wrote copiously for the stage.

His first publication, the incomplete Cigarrales de Toledo (licensed in 1621, but not published till 1624), is a miscellany, containing short tales, novels, verses and three plays. One of the novels, Los Tres maridos burlados, probably derived from Francesco Cieco da Ferrara's Mambriano, and the play entitled El Vergonzoso en palacio reveal his wit and ingenuity. The preface to the Cigarrales de Toledo states that Tirso de Molina had already written three hundred plays, and at this period of his career he was second only to his friend Lope de Vega in popularity.

Félix Arturo Lope de Vega y Carpio (25 November 1562 – 27 August 1635) was a Spanish playwright and poet. He was one of the key figures in the Spanish Golden Century Baroque literature. His reputation in the world of Spanish literature is second only to that of Cervantes, while the sheer volume of his literary output is unequalled, making him one of the most prolific authors in the history of literature.

Nicknamed "The Phoenix of Wits" and "Monster of Nature" (because of the sheer volume of his work) by Miguel de Cervantes, Lope de Vega renewed the Spanish theatre at a time when it was starting to become a mass cultural phenomenon. He defined the key characteristics of it, and along with Calderón de la Barca and Tirso de Molina, he took Spanish baroque theatre to its greater limits. Because of the insight, depth and ease of his plays, he is regarded among the best dramatists of Western literature, his plays still being represented worldwide. He was also one of the best lyric poets in the Spanish language, and author of various novels. Although not well known in the English-speaking world, his plays were presented in England as late as the 1660s, when diarist Samuel Pepys recorded having attended some adaptations and translations of them, although he omits mentioning the author.