Manuel Tamayo y Baus

• Born: September 15, 1829
• Birthplace: Madrid, Spain
• Died: June 20, 1898
• Place of death: Madrid, Spain

Other Literary Forms

The reputation of Manuel Tamayo y Baus rests almost exclusively on some twenty years of creative work for the theater. Historical dramas and thesis plays concerned with contemporary mores were the centerpieces of this literary activity. Abundant, too, were the contributions that he made to subdivisions of the primary genre for which he wrote, inasmuch as he authored many humorous one-act plays, cultivated the short dramatic allegory called the loa, and composed librettos for the Spanish version of the musical comedy, the zarzuela. In addition to plays, he wrote three disquisitions on theatrical matters: his prologue to Angela; a formal letter meant for publication addressed to his closest friend, Manuel Cañete, concerning the tragedy Virginia; and his maiden speech before the Royal Spanish Academy on his public reception into that body in June of 1859. These essays on poetics provide valuable insights into his own art and into the dramatic theory and aesthetics of the day.

Achievements

Some critics consider Manuel Tamayo y Baus to have been Spain’s foremost playwright of the nineteenth century. Agreement seems fairly general that his masterpiece is A New Drama and that his was a leading role during a period of transition, uncertainty, and tentativeness for the national theater, then somewhat in decline. His best writing came to the fore when the Romantic school was in the process of being supplanted and when there was a reorientation in the direction of greater realism on stage, more penetrating psychological study, and a new insistence on moralizing satire aimed at unwholesome aspects of the acquisitiveness of an emerging middle class. All these tendencies were grist for his own dramatic mill.

For Tamayo y Baus, realism involved a certain degree of poetizing; however, he called for an idealized imitation of nature rather than advocate the painting of harsh realities exactly as they are. In his treatises, he propounded the depiction of a purified reality, in which conformity to fact still implied a kind of truthfulness never devoid of beauty. He himself succeeded in incorporating this unifying technical process into his own work. Leopoldo Alas (Clarín), one of the most prestigious and demanding critics of the day, found human truth in Tamayo y Baus’s greatest masterpiece, A New Drama, but truth in combination with what Alas defined as the two ultimate elements of beauty: the rudimentary integrals of forcefulness and harmony.

These descriptive norms of Tamayo y Baus were somewhat classical in spirit, and he endorsed them both as critic and as dramatist. His admiration for antiquity led him to believe that the ancient genre of tragedy symbolized dramatic expression in its highest form. Unsurprisingly, Tamayo y Baus would choose to bring before the public his own effort in this area of composition. The immediate fruit of his labors, Virginia, dated 1853, constituted the first of his two versions of that play, for he revised and perfected it over a considerable period of time. Always the author’s favorite from among the many and diverse works that he had written, Virginia would come to be known as Spain’s finest modern tragedy.

Several other plays by Tamayo y Baus either triumphed on the stage or were well received. A list of the best known and most respected would doubtless include such titles as La Ricahembra, La locura de amor, La bola de nieve, Lo positivo, and Lances de honor. From the points of view of critical acclaim and international attention, however, none of these plays surpassed A New Drama. Hispanists from outside Spain have attested the range of its influence. For example, Boris Tannenberg, writing in Paris in 1902, suggested that A New Drama provided a likely prototype for one of the most famous of selections from the operatic repertoire, Ruggiero Leoncavallo’s I pagliacci (1892).

Another critic, Gerard Flynn, in an important biographical study, Manuel Tamayo y Baus (1973), remarks that the greatly differing degrees of imitation and originality shown by Tamayo y Baus in his many rather free arrangements of foreign plays has served to render more difficult an accurate accounting of what truly constitutes the playwright’s own works; for this reason they have been estimated to number, variously, between thirty-five and fifty. Tamayo y Baus seems to have been the Spanish dramatist of the nineteenth century most oriented to German theater, and he imitated in particular Friedrich Schiller.

Biography

Manuel Tamayo y Baus began his life practically on stage because his family both managed and formed part of a company of itinerant players. After the birth of Manuel, which occurred in Madrid in 1829, the traveling troupe was to center its activities in the south of Spain, touring cities of Andalusia.

His parents, José Tamayo and Joaquina Baus, were able and distinguished artists. His father, an actor, directed the company, while the beautiful and talented Joaquina was a major leading lady of the day. Two of Manuel’s brothers, Andrés and Victorino, were also associated with the family’s enterprise in various professional undertakings. Indeed, Victorino and Manuel would eventually collaborate as writers, specifically on Tran-Tran, a minor play of the year 1850; of much greater import would be, however, another, later instance of their work together: Performing admirably as an actor in Manuel’s A New Drama, Victorino would introduce to the Spanish public for the first time the powerful and moving role of the tragic figure Yorick.

That triumph, however, would not come soon; it would have to wait until 1867, when Manuel’s activities as a playwright would be drawing very near their close. Being a principal role, and a masculine one, Yorick is a reminder, by way of stark contrast, of a fundamental characteristic of Tamayo y Baus’s professional inclinations. In the years that represent the very beginnings of his career, the young Tamayo y Baus had shown a marked preference for plays in which the leading character was female.

The partiality shown in his theater for feminine characters, clearly reflected in the titles of several of his earliest works—Juana de Arco, Angela, Virginia, and La Ricahembra—initially arose from his exceedingly close relationship with his mother. He adored her, and he yearned to compose dramatic parts that would provide her with vehicles to display her unusual acting skill. From Joaquina Baus, Manuel had received much of his initial training, his first lessons in the arts of stagecraft. He was intellectually prepared to reap the benefits of this guidance at a remarkably early age. What quite likely constitutes the most frequently repeated story regarding incidents in Tamayo y Baus’s life deals precisely with that particular. His biographers, beginning with Aureliano Fernández-Guerra y Orbe, invariably relate that when the youngster was still only eleven, his first successful effort was presented on the stage. Entitled Genoveva de Brabante, it appeared in Granada in 1841 and was an arrangement of a foreign work from France. Not unexpectedly, his mother performed in that drama, portraying the principal role. When the final curtain fell, a highly emotional scene transpired: Embracing and accompanying each other to the proscenium, the proud mother and son joyfully received together the audience’s warm ovation.

The script for Genoveva de Brabante has not survived, but in another, later play that has been published, Joaquina Baus’s name is to be found listed among the members of the cast. Thus, in 1847, she was Saint Joan in Juana de Arco, a work first presented in Madrid in October of that year. José Tamayo was to appear in that same production also. With filial devotion, Manuel had dedicated this version of Schiller’s Die Jungfrau von Orleans (1801; The Maid of Orleans, 1835) to both of his parents—the objects of all of his affections, according to a statement contained within its prologue.

This sentiment and others expressed in the dedication suggest that Juana de Arco may have been written quite some time before the date of its first performance. Less than two years later, in September of 1849, Tamayo y Baus would marry María Amalia Máiquez, a young lady whom he had first met in Granada before his return to Madrid in 1843. These dates and the sequence of events leading to the marriage make highly questionable the thought that his parents in 1847 would still be the sole object of his affections. The marriage, a very happy one, served to strengthen the ties of Tamayo y Baus to the theatrical life of his country. The Máiquez family was very prominent in Spanish acting circles, and Amalia’s father, also called José, was himself an impresario. Apart from making possible Amalia’s loving presence at his side, the betrothal and the union must have had other immediate consequences for Tamayo y Baus’s life—emotional results of a consolatory nature—for soon he would suffer the grievous loss of his mother and, indeed, sorrowful and bereft, would find himself dedicating Angela to her memory in 1852.

With these antecedents, Tamayo y Baus, for nearly two decades of his life, would grind out play after play with only an occasional interruption. From the total perspective of his professional life and fame, his career in the theater would provide him with many distinctive moments of singular success, especially when he triumphed with Virginia in 1853, with La locura de amor in 1855, and with A New Drama in 1867. Yet only three years after the gratifying reception of A New Drama, Tamayo y Baus would leave behind the theater and cease to be a playwright. Several explanations for this peremptory action might be properly adduced. Los hombres de bien, his last play, had been coolly received in 1870, and Tamayo y Baus was sensitive to this. Furthermore, a great change had taken place in Spain in 1868 with the downfall of the monarchy; Tamayo y Baus’s conservative ideology, reflected in his plays, now seemed out of date.

Divorced from his former career, Tamayo y Baus would devote the last twenty-eight years of his life to other duties and activities. Elected to the Spanish Royal Academy in 1858, this body would now occupy a great part of his time. Indeed, only shortly after his retirement from the theater, he would be elected the Academy’s secretary in 1874. Also, having had prior service as the administrator in charge of the Library of San Isidro, he would assume the prestigious post of director of the Spanish National Library. Beginning in 1884, he would discharge this duty until his death in 1898.

Analysis

Another hard experience for Manuel Tamayo y Baus, one that followed more immediately on his marriage than the death of his mother, was the failure of El cinco de agosto in December of 1849. Composed by Tamayo y Baus in an exaggerated Romantic style, gloomy and lugubrious, it was in fact his first attempt at an original drama worked out entirely on his own. Its reception was sufficiently negative to compel the writer to retreat, to fall back once again to the protective aura of Schiller . Thus, his Angela, based on the German playwright’s Kabale und Liebe (pr., pb. 1784; Cabal and Love, 1795), was another adaptation. Nevertheless, a considerable portion of the creative invention demonstrated in the play came directly from Tamayo y Baus.

During the period 1848 to 1852, Tamayo y Baus readily accepted several collaborations. He produced, writing in this manner, a number of minor works, some original in their themes and some in the form of arrangements. A brief listing of these collaborations with other playwrights could be presented as follows: With Luis Fernández-Guerra y Orbe and Manuel Cañete, he wrote Un juramento, 1848; with Miguel Ruiz y Torrent, Un marido duplicado, 1849; with Victorino Tamay y Baus, Tran-Tran, 1850; with Benito de Llanza y Esquibel, Centellas y Moncada, 1850; with Cañete, once more, two loas in 1852, El don del cielo and La esperanza de la patria; and again with Fernández-Guerra y Orbe and Cañete, El peluquero de su alteza, 1852. The itemizing of these minor works is worthwhile, for it throws light on just how much, even in this early stage of his career, Tamayo y Baus’s name was kept before the public. This occurred not only in Madrid, where almost all these plays were produced and published, but elsewhere, too, for Centellas y Moncada was a work first performed in Barcelona. Moreover, some of the entries in the list reflect indirectly the intimate personal relationships that existed not only between the two Manuels, Tamayo y Baus and Cañete, but also between them and Aureliano and Luis, the brothers Fernández-Guerra y Orbe. Theirs were enduring bonds of friendship, going back to a former part of Tamayo y Baus’s lifetime, his years of residence in Granada.

Una apuesta and Huyendo del perejil

Two pieces by the dramatic poet also belonging to the initial period of his production were delightful, entertaining one-act plays: Una apuesta, of 1851, and Huyendo del perejil, dated 1853. Una apuesta was another arrangement, derived from a French work that dates back to 1768, La Gageure imprévue. Both of the one-act plays were popular with the public because by this time Tamayo y Baus had thoroughly mastered uncomplicated plot lines and clever dialogue. He himself discounted these shorter works as mere trifles, yet these short plays have a certain sprightliness that maintains the freshness of their appeal. Thus, in 1930, Cony Sturgis and Juanita Robinson published in New York a classroom edition of precisely these two plays. The reader is indebted to them for an explanation of the odd title Huyendo del perejil, which means literally in English “fleeing from the parsley.” This puzzling phraseology, the coeditors make clear, is the first half of the Spanish saying “huyendo del perejil, le nació en la frente,” which can be translated to English as, “fleeing from the parsley, it sprouted on his brow.” This curious and seemingly unintelligible proverb is the Spanish equivalent of “out of the frying pan into the fire.” In the play, a nobleman, fearful that his son is being pursued by a seductress interested only in his money, blindly sets out to prevent their projected marriage. Without realizing who she is, the Marquis meets the young lady in question and falls deeply in love with her himself. When her true identity is finally revealed to him, the outwitted father, now well aware of her beauty, intelligence, and other admirable qualities, abashedly relents.

It is somewhat astonishing that in the very same year, 1853, that Tamayo y Baus authored such a lighthearted and amusing work, he would also compose and present to his public so deeply pondered and erudite a play as his tragedy Virginia. The contrast between the two compositions is a measure of his extraordinary aesthetic breadth.

La Ricahembra

The following year, 1854, Tamayo y Baus and Aureliano Fernández-Guerra y Orbe collaborated on La Ricahembra. Written in verse, this was a historical drama stylistically reminiscent of the theater of the Golden Age. Tamayo y Baus, still interested in probing the hearts of determined women, paints in La Ricahembra the proud figure of Doña de Mendoza, who, finding herself a rich and powerful widow, rejects a multitude of suitors. She believes her noble lineage is superior to theirs. Finally, a gentleman who seeks to enter into courtship is so incensed by her hauteur that he slaps her face in pure frustration. Her pride now dictates that she must marry him, lest it be bandied about that any man other than her husband has ever dared to strike her.

La bola de nieve

Both in La locura de amor, of 1855, and in La bola de nieve, of 1856, jealousy is once again the central theme. In the latter play, the fierce and self-destructive fault is completely groundless, affecting two principal characters instead of one, a brother and a sister. Their overactive minds suspect that the respective objects of their love have been dallying with others. Their imagination on this score grows ever wilder—indeed, it snowballs, as is suggested by the title of the play. Estranged at last from Luis and Clara, the guiltless pair to whom the siblings were previously betrothed, María and Fernando now become attracted to each other.

After the composition of La bola de nieve, Tamayo turned away from verse, probably sensing that prose was preferable for the realistic dramas on contemporary themes to which he now wished to dedicate his art. It was only with some reluctance that Spanish dramatists of the century were forsaking the use of versification; Adelardo López de Ayala y Herrera, for example, who ably shared the limelight with Tamayo y Baus in the production of modern thesis plays, used metrics in Consuelo as late as 1878. Tamayo y Baus, however, who had had great success using prose in La locura de amor, must have felt quite comfortable employing it.

Hija y madre

At this time, he began to write a series of dramas with contemporary settings. These were his thesis plays, works that normally contained a strong moral and religious message, one that reflected the firm Catholic piety of the author and his equally staunch conservative ideology. Hija y madre, of 1855, was one such play, and its fundamental lesson in morality dealt with filial obligations and respect.

Lo positivo

Lo positivo of 1862, Lances de honor of 1863, and Los hombres de bien of 1870 are three more of the social dramas typical of his later work. The first was inspired by a French piece, Léon Laya’s Le Duc Job. Tamayo y Baus greatly simplified the original, reducing what had been its eleven characters to merely four. Like Ayala y Herrera’s Consuelo, Lo positivo was an attack on loveless marriage; it condemned the idea of entering into wedlock for the sake of mere convenience and for materialistic gain. This play, like many of Tamayo y Baus’s later works oriented toward morality, ends on a happy note. The protagonist, Cecilia, torn between opposing sentiments of love and interest, finally decides in favor of the poor but good man and rejects the unscrupulous millionaire. Cleverly adapted, Lo positivo was favorably received.

Lances de honor

The institution of dueling would be denounced in Lances de honor. Tamayo y Baus privately considered such mortal combat an act too savage to be allowed in any civilized society. The principal character of the play, Don Fabián García, is a memorable one, ranking among the most powerful of the masculine roles created by Tamayo y Baus. A noble-minded figure, he has been challenged to a duel. Though constantly provoked and publicly shamed by his implacable adversary, who is completely in the wrong, Don Fabián’s deep religious convictions will not let him participate in acts of bloodshed. His son Miguel becomes dismayed by the ignominious treatment his father now receives from those who judge him to be a coward. The relentless challenger, a politician named Don Pedro, even slaps Don Fabián. At this point, the sons of the two rivals decide to carry out the duel themselves. Miguel is wounded unto death. Don Pedro, now cognizant of his egotism and of the enormity of his guilt, kneels in repentance before God.

Les hombres de bien

Yet another religious message is to be found in Los hombres de bien. Here Tamayo y Baus showed his displeasure with Ernest Renan’s Vie de Jésus (1863; The Life of Jesus, 1864), which denied the divinity of Christ. Los hombres de bien was coldly received and, indeed, nothing more would be written by Tamayo y Baus for the theater after its production.

Already, long before 1870, he had begun what could be called a nominal withdrawal or disassociation from the stage through the use of pseudonyms in place of his real name. Instead of signing works with “Manuel Tamayo,” he employed pen names such as “José María García,” “Don Fulano de Tal,” or “Joaquín Estébanez.” It was with the last of these fictitious designations, a favorite, that he acknowledged authorship of Lo positivo, Lances de honor, Más vale maña que fuerza, A New Drama, No hay mal que por bien no venga, and Los hombres de bien. Estébanez was a family name, inherited from the maternal side.

A New Drama has always been seen as a prodigious proof of Tamayo y Baus’s eminent gifts. In view of the universal praise that it has received for its uniqueness, A New Drama merits in this analysis separate and more extended exposition. Virginia, his tragedy, and La locura de amor, the finest production of the dramatist within the historical genre, are similarly deserving of additional attention and regard.

Virginia

It was the second of these plays that came first in time. In a period when neoclassical tragedy no longer was in vogue, Tamayo y Baus attempted to rehabilitate this form of literature with Virginia, modernizing it through greater realism, stronger sentiments, more dramatic vigor, and an increased emphasis on the psychological study of individual characters. He made these changes with the intention of still respecting and blending into his tragedy what he considered to be sublime characteristics of this class of literature, its loftiness and distinctive air of dignity. Yet he must have felt a certain dubiousness about this type of experimentation. While Virginia proved successful and although he kept reworking it, Tamayo y Baus would write no further tragic works along these same lines.

Virginia was a beautiful Roman girl besieged by the cruel and tyrannical decemvir Appius Claudius. In a final, desperate effort to escape the powerful magistrate’s ruthless attempts to possess her physically, she heroically freed herself and her family from disgrace by not resisting when her father came to kill her. Virginia’s story, an ancient one recorded in the works of Livy, has many points of contact with the legend of Lucretia. The nature of the death of the latter heroine supposedly excited the Romans to expulse the monarchy, for—as the tale goes—having been raped by Sextus Tarquinius, the son of the despotic king of Rome, the chaste victim informed her husband and her father of what had happened and then dutifully proceeded to commit suicide. Virginia’s sacrifice, like that of the virtuous Lucretia, would be the signal for an oppressed people’s popular revolt.

Tamayo y Baus’s play had been preceded by many theatrical versions of this theme. In his prologue addressed to Cañete, he discounted the value of those that had been written earlier in Spain and seemed particularly drawn to more modern, foreign arrangements of the tragedy, such as the Italian Vittorio Alfieri’s Virginia of 1784 and that of the Frenchman Isidore La Tour de Saint-Ybars, dated 1845. The plot line of Tamayo y Baus’s first version of 1853 can be sketched as follows: Invading the home of Virginia while her husband and father are gone to war, the perfidious decemvir Appius Claudius professes his love to her. The new young bride angrily spurns these unwanted attentions. The intruder, intoxicated with his own political power and determined to satisfy his whim, orders his client Marcus to have Virginia seized on a pretext. The two conspire to distort the law by falsely claiming that Virginia was not the daughter of the brave soldier Virginius, but was instead the offspring of a slave of Marcus. Adamant, oblivious to every entreaty, Appius Claudius presides over the trial and cynically awards Virginia to his client Marcus. The judicial travesty is so patently extreme that it horrifies the Romans who are present. At this point Virginius, who has hastened back from the wars, humbly steps forward. The magistrate unconcernedly grants him permission to do what he beseeches, to speak for one last time to the daughter that he has lost. Both he and Virginia now realize that only death can free her from a miserable bondage that will place her at the beck and call of their lascivious adversary. Acquiescent, she dies at the hands of her father, stabbed by the knife that she herself was able to slip secretly to Virginius at the moment of their last embrace. This final touch, the provision of the weapon by the victim, was an innovation, a highly effective dramatic device added by Tamayo y Baus to the total legend of Virginia.

Both of Tamayo y Baus’s versions of Virginia can be read in his complete works, published between 1898 and 1900 and reissued as a single volume in 1947. Alejandro Pidal y Mon provided the prologue to this handy and useful work, which constitutes, if not in truth a collection of all Tamayo y Baus’s writings, the most comprehensive and readily available anthology on the subject. Pidal contended that La locura de amor, the play devoted to the deranged queen “Juana la loca,” was Tamayo y Baus’s best. Indeed, if quantity of translations can be at all accepted as a reliable indicator, then surely La locura de amor must rank at least a healthy second in popularity to A New Drama, taking into account the international reception afforded to each individual piece within the total corpus of Tamayo y Baus’s works.

La locura de amor

Normally, historical dramas were written in verse, but La locura de amor, of 1855, is an intensely emotional work expressed in a very beautiful if somewhat archaic prose. The title itself is highly suggestive, since it seems to indicate that Juana’s insanity was caused by love, by an uncontrollable jealousy aroused by the faithlessness of her husband. Tamayo y Baus seems sympathetic to Juana in his liberal interpretation of the theme. He depicts her, the heretrix to the throne of the great Isabel of Castile, as ennobled by her afflictions, raging with passion while beset by conspirators hovering near the throne. Yet she is driven to madness as much by the fears and the agitations that excite her thoughts as by the licentiousness of her royal consort. Even he, in the denouement of La locura de amor, is treated in rehabilitative fashion. When the young king, Felipe, lies dying, he confesses with fervor his contrition; too late, he realizes to his sorrow how deep his love for Juana really was.

In the final scene of La locura de amor, the queen’s mental illness can no longer be doubted. As she tenderly contemplates the body of her now dead spouse, Juana addresses all who are assembled, imposing general silence. In her mind, and to the dismay of all who stand about her, Felipe is not deceased; he has merely gone to sleep.

The true Juana la Loca was one of the most pathetic figures of the royal chronicles of Spain. Historical facts reveal that while Juana became queen of Castile in 1504, it was only two years later, in 1506, that she lost her husband. After the continued deterioration of her mental health, Juana would begin a period of some forty-seven years of seclusion, or of imprisonment, in the palace of Tordesillas. This would last until her own death in 1555. Interestingly, two playwrights who came after Tamayo y Baus, Benito Pérez Galdós and José Martín Recuerda, focused their attention on those years of her widowhood, the former with his play Santa Juana de Castilla, first presented in 1918, and the latter with El engañao, of 1981.

A New Drama

A New Drama was first performed in March of 1867. It is undeniably exceptional and, even within the bounds of Tamayo y Baus’s own production, stands apart as something of an anomaly. Set in Elizabethan England, in 1605, it bears precious little relation to the thesis plays dealing with contemporary middle-class society that Tamayo y Baus was so actively composing at the time.

Envy and infidelity are central to its argument. Its characters are eight in number, and all the parts are male roles except for that of Alicia. All are in some way involved with William Shakespeare’s company of actors and with the rehearsal and presentation of a brand-new play. Alicia is married to Yorick, a popular comic actor who is old enough to be her father. He loves her intensely, but her feelings for him are nearer to gratitude than love. Alicia has married Yorick for two reasons: to satisfy the wishes of her now dead mother and because Yorick was the selfless benefactor of the older woman in a time of tribulation. Yorick also took in an orphan, Edmundo, and had reared him like a son and protégé. Both Alicia and Edmundo must struggle to suppress their true sentiments, the fact that even before the marriage they fell in love. These feelings emerged when they performed Romeo and Juliet together.

The play begins peacefully. Yorick is overjoyed. Ambitious to try more than comic roles and having learned of the new play, he has finally persuaded Shakespeare to give him the tragic lead. A first work by a fledgling author, the new drama tells the story of Count Octavio; this nobleman, having generously favored an indigent young man, now learns that the treacherous ingrate coveted his wife.

Shakespeare was hesitant in casting Yorick as Octavio. Normally another talented member of his company, Walton, would be awarded such a tragic role. Walton pretends to accept his replacement, but he is envious and swears in his heart to have vengeance. Well aware that Edmundo and Alicia are in love, he recalls bitterly that he, too, suffered a wife’s infidelity. He undertakes a campaign to awaken the suspicions of Yorick through constant insinuation.

Shakespeare, almost omniscient, fully understands the true emotions of all four: Yorick, Alicia, Walton, and Edmundo. He directs their real lives with the same air of authority with which he directs fantasy on the stage. He warns Walton to cease his meddling, and his ascendancy at first works its effect.

Edmundo and Alicia have never expressed their love physically; indeed, theirs is a totally joyless love, heavily riddled with guilt. When Edmundo sees how Yorick’s suspicions of Alicia grow, he writes her a letter proposing that they flee. The night of the performance, Walton, who has intercepted the letter, substitutes it on stage for the one that Count Octavio is to read.

The final scene of A New Drama is a play-within-a-play. Landolfo (Walton) hands over to Count Octavio (Yorick) an incriminating letter dealing with his wife Beatriz’ infidelity (she is played by Alicia). Immediately thereafter, in the new drama, Count Octavio is to kill Manfredo, the young lover (Edmundo), an act that becomes a terrible reality when Yorick, at the very height of a triumphant performance, does, indeed, slay Edmundo on the stage. Fiction is now truth. What the audience wildly applauded as artistic make-believe is no longer dramatic imitation.

A New Drama ends when Shakespeare emerges to deliver his last lines. He announces to the public that Yorick, irrationally caught up in his characterization, has killed the actor who played Manfredo. There is a second disaster as well: Another performer in the play is also dead. Walton’s body, pierced by a sword, has been found lying on the street. There is every reason to believe that Shakespeare himself knows the answer to that mystery.

Mixing reality with fiction, A New Drama presents both the historical figure of Shakespeare and characters that are based on that poet’s own creations. Reminiscent of Othello and Iago are Yorick, the jealous husband, and Walton, his evil confidant. In Alìcia and Edmundo, Romeo and Juliet vaguely are repeated. The play-within-a-play structure, masterfully handled by Tamayo, also has antecedents. One’s thoughts immediately turn to Shakespeare again and to Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (pr. c. 1600-1601). Lope de Vega Carpio also made use of the same kind of formal arrangement, as did Alexandre Dumas, père, in his play called Kean: Ou, Désordre et génie (pr., pb. 1836, with Théaulon de Lambert and Frédéric de Courcy; Edmund Kean: Or, The Genius and the Libertine, 1847). Moreover, Edmund Kean has numerous points of contact with the plot of A New Drama.

Once again, as in La locura de amor, Tamayo y Baus stands supreme in the psychological analysis of character. Yorick, Alicia, and Edmundo are not merely symbols of good or bad behavior. They are depicted at all times as extremely human, overwhelmed by indecisiveness and by personal insecurity. Even the villain Walton is provided logical motivation. Finally, Leopoldo Alas, whose political orientation was much more liberal than that of Tamayo y Baus, did not allow his politics to obscure his judgment regarding the playwright’s great worth. It was his prediction that the play A New Drama would be considered for centuries a priceless jewel in the treasury of Spanish drama.

Bibliography

Flynn, Gerard. Manuel Tamayo y Baus. New York: Twayne, 1973. A basic biography of Tamayo y Baus that also provides literary criticism of his works.

Mazzeo, Guido E. “Yorick’s Covert Motives in Un Drama Nuevo.” MLN 83 (1968): 275-278. Mazzeo maintains that the character of Yorick already suspected that his wife was not faithful and therefore wanted to play the part of Octavio.

Podol, Peter L. “The Evolution of the Honor Theme in Modern Spanish Drama.” Hispanic Review 40, no. 1 (Winter, 1972): 53-72. Podol looks at the concept of honor in Lances de honor and A New Drama.