The purpose of this article is to examine the ways in which Lope de Vega manipulates epistolas to serve his own ends with regards to language, both on a narrowly literary level and on a broader personal and even national one. What emerges is an epistola which blends both the self-evident art of poetry writing and critical speculation upon it, one which Lope consciously uses as a literary mode of vindication and defense for his ideas regarding proper discourse and as an attack on any type of discourse of which he disapproves.