Spanish Drama Since the 1600s

Introduction

Spanish theater of the Renaissance begins with startling suddenness, given the inexplicable absence of dramatic texts before the sixteenth century. Castilian literature, unlike Catalan literature, where mystery plays are well documented, offers only a few examples of dramatic works in the Middle Ages. The earliest extant work, Auto de los Reyes Magos (the play of the Magi), is a twelfth-century fragment dealing with the search for Jesus by the Three Wise Men. More than three hundred years elapse before one finds another mystery play, Gómez Manrique’s Representación del nacimiento de Nuestro Señor (wr. 1467-1481; Nativity play). Curiously, the earlier play is considered much more dramatically advanced than the latter work.

Research into the absence of medieval plays has not resolved the issue, although it is accepted that Catholic liturgy and festivals had a considerable impact on the nature of all early plays. Of these liturgical performances, only those that celebrated the Eucharist prospered sufficiently to continue to be performed. These representations, which came to be called autos sacramentales or sacramental plays and performed at the feast of Corpus Christi, did not fully mature until the last part of the sixteenth century. They were originally presented on carts; later, they took place in the city streets and retained their popular religious flavor. The strong theological framework that characterizes them was not established until the seventeenth century.

The use of religious matter informs all plays of the early Renaissance. The purpose of these works was to dramatize sacred events and render more immediate spiritual experience. Just as the Mass revealed its mystery, so did the plays project the deeper significance that underlay the physical occurrence. At the same time, numerous short plays were produced as court entertainment or to celebrate extraordinary events such as military victories, betrothals, weddings, or the monarch's entrance into a city. Perhaps the influence of the pastoral eclogue on this early theater is responsible for the persistent use of verse rather than prose. This element was to dominate in Spanish theater throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Finally, it is important to name the pervasive influence of Fernando de Rojas’s Comedia de Calisto y Melibea (1499, rev. ed. 1502 as Tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea; commonly known as La Celestina; Celestina, 1631), a work whose theme and effective dialogue reverberate in a variety of subsequent works.

Sixteenth-century Periods

Sixteenth-century drama can be divided into three uneven periods. The first, roughly from the beginning of the century to the middle, includes the primitive dramatic writers whose efforts laid the groundwork for later developments. The second period includes playwrights who were influenced by humanist writings and by the Aristotelian commentaries that dominated critical discourse from the middle of the sixteenth century onward. Some of these writers wrote for universities or small circles of friends, while others had a wider audience. Neither of these groups had a great impact on the development of drama, but their works represent a serious, if failed, attempt to introduce high tragedy into Spanish theater. The last two decades of the century are characterized by the arrival of the Valencian School of dramatists and of , thus setting the stage for the entrance of the new comedy, a dramatic form that extended over the entire seventeenth century.

Early Spanish drama is dominated by three figures—Juan del Encina, , and Lope de Rueda—but includes other playwrights whose works made telling contributions to the development of an indigenous tradition.

has long been considered the initiator of Spanish drama because it was his Nativity play in the last years of the fifteenth century that began the uninterrupted development of the genre. He wrote fourteen eclogues, a term that he introduced to define his production. His plays show a certain progression from purely liturgically influenced material to a secular view of the world. This tendency is best represented by his Egloga de Plácida y Vitoriana (XIV; pr. 1513), in which a suicide caused by love is contemplated, and is perhaps a consequence of his being exposed during his voyage to Italy to Italian literary tastes, in particular the pastoral mode, which reigned supreme among all other literary forms. Encina’s works are characterized by the presence of rustics who speak a dialect called sayagués, a convention that was to be widely imitated by subsequent writers, and by the use of the plot summary, with which the spectators were aided in the comprehension of the play.

Several important dramatists belong to this period and either continued or developed the material and devices introduced by Encina. was a Portuguese who wrote many of his forty-two works in Spanish. He prepared many pieces for various occasions. Outstanding among them are Tragicomédia de dom Duardos (pr. 1525; English translation, 1942), a lyric rendering of a chivalric romance, and Auto da sibila Cassandra (pr. 1513; The Play of the Sibyl Cassandra, 1921), an allegorical reworking of a Nativity play. Another contemporary was Lucas Fernández, who continued the interest in eclogues and Nativity plays. Diego Sánchez de Badajoz whose morality plays contributed heavily to the development of the sacramental plays, is also worthy of note.

Although he had scant exposure in Spain during his lifetime, is important to the history of the theater because he made several significant contributions. His collected works, titled Propalladia (English translation, 1943), published in Naples in 1517, reveal his strong connection with the Italian humanist milieu in which he lived. In his introduction, he theorizes on the nature of comedy and tragedy, on the number of actors and acts in a play, and on the need for dramatic decorum. He also sets up a classification for comedy, suggesting that there should be two types. The first type is a comedy of observation that describes social customs with some realism: Comedia tinellaria (pr. 1516; The Buttery, 1964) exposes domestic malpractices in the kitchen of a Roman cardinal, and Comedia soldadesca (wr. 1510; the soldiers’ comedy) deals with army life in Renaissance Italy. The second type is a comedy based on fantasy—that is, a realistic depiction of imaginary events. His ComediaHimenea (pr. 1516; Hymen, 1903) and Comedia seraphina (wr. c. 1508) exemplify this kind of play, which introduced into Spanish theater the use of plot complications based on confusion of incidents.

Among Torres Naharro’s other contributions to Spanish theater were the introduction of the honor theme and the development of a full-length play. He was the first to use the term jornada to indicate “act” as well as the first to introduce dramatic devices that were to be used frequently by later dramatists.

The last significant writer of this period was , the first man to write plays that were presented by his own theatrical troupe. Unlike the plays of Torres Naharro, those of Lope de Rueda were meant to be performed: They were staged in city squares. Lope de Rueda was largely responsible for the development of the interlude, or paso a genre deeply indebted to the Italian commedia dell’arte. These short plays, written in prose, are based on everyday situations and are mostly comic in nature. Miguel de Cervantes, as an old man, remembered this playwright and remarked that the scenery and costumes of the period could all fit in one sack. Theatrical effects, as a matter of fact, did not improve for a long time because Cervantes himself, in one of his plays, directed that thunder and lightning be reproduced by making noise under the stage with a barrel full of stones and by the discharge of a rocket. To Lope de Rueda is also given the credit of introducing the figure of a comic type that was later to develop into the gracioso, the comic servant whose quick wit and realistic view of life enliven classic Spanish theater. Rueda’s best-known pasos are El convidado (pb. 1567; the guest), La carátula (pb. 1567; The Mask, 1964), and Las aceitunas (pb. 1567; The Olives, 1846).

Serious Dramatic Expression

Straddling the first half of the century and the arrival of the new comedy were the efforts of men of letters who, under the influence of the great controversy over the interpretation of Aristotle’s De poetica (c. 334-323 BCE; Poetics, 1705), sought to promote a more serious dramatic expression. University-based writers tried to introduce classical tragedy into Spain. The audience for this kind of theater was not yet developed, however, and these plays remained a theater for a select minority of closet dramas that had relatively little influence on future playwrights.

The most important of these dramatists are Fernán Pérez de Oliva, who adapted prose tragedies of and to Spanish; Micael de Carvajal, best known for the religious tragedy Tragedia Josefina (pb. 1535; The Josephine Tragedy, 1998); Jerónimo Bermúdez, who left two works, Nise lastimosa (pb. 1577; Nise the pitiful) and Nise laureada (pb. 1577; Nise crowned), closely related to a play by António Ferreira dealing with the topic of the tragic Portuguese figure of Inés de Castro; Andrés Rey de Artieda, whose best work is Los amantes (pb. 1581; the lovers), a story of two lovers whose destiny leads to tragedy; Cristóbal de Virués, who produced five plays and moved slowly away from imitation of Greek tragedies, including the observance of the unities, and toward a more popular genre closely related to the romantic comedy that Lope de Vega was later to develop; and Juan de la Cueva, who is perhaps the most notable dramatist of this group. He tried to direct tragedy away from imitations of Greek works and toward a more nationalist conception of the genre. His best-known plays are Los siete infantes de Lara (pr. 1579; the seven princes of Lara), the theme of which is taken from medieval epic literature, and Tragedia del príncipe tirano (pb. 1588; the tragedy of the tyrant prince), which deals with the nature of proper government, a theme of great interest in the sixteenth century. Cueva’s importance rests principally on his introduction of Spanish themes from history and literature, although it seems he was unable to accommodate his material within the limits imposed by theatrical exigencies. Lupercio Leonardo de Argensola is remembered as a dedicated classicist who strongly criticized the new comedy proposed by Lope de Vega. His two extant plays, Alejandra and Isabela (pr. 1585), are Christian tragedies with a strong moralistic tone.

The last member of this generation was What is known about his theater is based on the introduction to his Ocho comedias y ocho entremeses nuevos (pb. 1615; eight comedies and eight interludes). Cervantes states that he had written nearly thirty plays in his early years and that he had reasonable success with them, but only two plays from this period (the 1580s) are extant. Cervantes also reveals that when he tried to perform his works, he had no takers. Lope de Vega had come on the scene, and the older genre that Cervantes represented held no interest for the public. Cervantes’s most famous play is El cerco de Numancia (wr. 1585; The Siege of Numantia, 1870), which is based on the siege by the Romans of the Celtiberic city of Numantia. The siege, which lasted many years, finally ended with the death of the last inhabitant, who preferred to die by suicide than become enslaved. The play mixes history and legend and seeks to establish that the victorious expansion of the Spanish Empire in the sixteenth century was but the fulfillment of that courageous resolve. The author of El ingenioso hidalgo don Quixote de la Mancha (1605, 1615; The History of the Valorous and Wittie Knight-Errant, Don Quixote of the Mancha, 1612-1620; better known as Don Quixote de la Mancha) contributed to the Spanish theater a strong preoccupation with personal experience. Cervantes made use of his adventures as an enslaved captive in Algiers to write several plays and such lively interludes as El juez de los divorcios (pb. 1615; The Divorce Court Judge, 1919) and El retablo de las maravillas (pb. 1615; The Wonder Show, 1948), which sparkle with wit and social criticism.

Rise of Permanent Theaters

The next development of the Spanish theater was largely the result of a much-needed reform. Performances had taken place in city squares and in palaces but always on a movable stage with no possibility of making technical improvements. The opportunity to do so came with the establishment of fixed places of performance in Madrid, Valencia, and Seville. The theater of the Golden Age owes its existence to a confluence of seemingly contradictory forces. Religious confraternities in need of money for their charitable works decided that the popularity of theatrical performances afforded them the best source of revenue. They leased corrales, courtyards surrounded by houses, and had an administrator take care of the arrangements. At first, these organizations received a part of the daily income, but eventually, after the city governments took control of the theaters, they received an annual subsidy. This unlikely connection is important because it explains the capacity of the theater to withstand a barrage of criticism against its alleged immorality. Because the institutions needed the funds for worthwhile works, the theater was not only tolerated but also protected. In fact, performances that were initially permitted only on Sunday came to be more and more frequent, until nearly all restrictions were removed.

The courtyards, the most important in Madrid being the Corral de la Cruz (1579) and the Corral del Príncipe (1582), were bordered on either side by houses whose windows served as lodges and were occupied by important personages. The back had a balcony that was reserved for women, who used a separate door. The sides below the windows had rows of seats, and the middle ground was left empty and was used by the humblest element of the audience. The stage, which occupied the side opposite the ladies’ balcony, was an elevated platform with a curtain that permitted exits and entrances. There were no stage props other than a gallery above the stage that served variously as the balcony of a building, the ramparts of a castle, or any other high place. Influential at this juncture was the presence of Italian troupes, especially that of Alberto Naseli, known as Ganassa, who contributed money to the building of the first Spanish theater and who, with other Italians, was responsible for the introduction of new scenic techniques as well as stage machinery. Performances took place during the day, and because there was no scenery, the text itself had to supply information regarding place, time, and circumstances.

Valencia Versus Madrid

The development of Spanish drama in the seventeenth century took its impetus from the titanic output of Modern research, however, has advanced the idea that the honor of first having a fixed theater belongs to Valencia rather than to Madrid. It was believed that the Valencian dramatists owed their development to the presence of Lope de Vega, who went there in 1588 after being banished from Madrid for having libeled an actress. It is quite possible, however, that it was Lope de Vega who profited from his stay in Valencia by learning from the older and more experienced playwrights of the previous period. Among them were Francisco Augustin Tarregá, author of El prado de Valencia (pr. 1600; the meadow of Valencia) and La duquesa constante (pr. 1608; the constant duchess), two works that include many elements that became the characteristics of the Golden Age, such as local atmosphere, love complications, conceptual language, and multiple metric forms, among others; Rey de Artieda, the author of Los amantes, which depicted the legend of the star-crossed lovers that was also used by later playwrights; and Gaspar de Aguilar, known particularly for his El mercader amante (pr. c. 1600; The Merchant Lover, 1849), a play in which the character of two women in love is tested.

The most significant member of this group was Guillén de Castro y Bellvís, whose plays El amor constante (pr. 1596-1599; the constant love) and Los mal casados de Valencia (pr. 1595-1604; the unhappy marrieds of Valencia) show strong local flavor. He took the themes of his plays from Cervantes, using mythology as well as medieval ballads. It was precisely from this source that he took the inspiration for his best-known play, La mocedades del Cid (1618; The Youthful Adventures of the Cid, 1939), in two parts. This play, which contributed substantially to ’s Le Cid (pr. 1637; The Cid, 1637), vibrates with passion and energy and is a fitting representation of the national hero of Spain as a young man.

The main historical problem here is whether it was Lope de Vega who, during his exile, introduced his vision of the new comedy or whether, on the contrary, the young Lope de Vega, then aged twenty-six, was influenced by these writers and then built on this experience to develop the drama of the Golden Age.

Golden Age Comedia

This drama, which is known collectively as the comedia without distinction among comedies, tragedies, and dramas, is a vast body of plays that at one time numbered in the thousands—a plenitude attributable not only to the astonishing prolificacy of the writers but also to the fact that, given the smallness of the total audience, plays had to be replaced after one or two performances; playwrights often refer to the Spaniards’ impatience and desire for novelty. Lope de Vega alone, according to best estimates, wrote nearly five hundred plays, more than three hundred of which are still in existence. This huge number of works has not been completely analyzed or classified. As a consequence, an authoritative, all-encompassing view is not possible. Lope de Vega’s canon draws on a bewildering number of sources for its plots: Spanish history, medieval ballads, chronicles, mythology, Italian novellas, Roman history, the Bible, chivalric novels, hagiography, and everyday events. There are, however, some general characteristics that can be pointed out as guideposts for Lope de Vega’s readers.

The comedia is a three-act play, written in verse, with each act numbering roughly one thousand lines. It is a polymetric genre that uses traditional Spanish verse forms, the most common of which is the romance, the Spanish ballad form, featuring eight-syllable lines and assonant rhyme; the Italian-influenced seven-syllable and eleven-syllable lines are also frequently employed in various stanzaic forms. These forms are used with reliable idiosyncrasy by the various dramatists, and it is possible to determine the chronology of their production by the preference that they accord to the various verse forms at a particular time. Lope de Vega, in his El arte nuevo de hacer comedias en este tiempo (1609; The New Art of Writing Plays, 1914), suggests under which dramatic situations these verse forms should be used. Each act is divided not into scenes but into action blocks, of which there are usually three. As indicated above, the stage had no set decoration and no costumes that were chronologically appropriate. They did, however, have costumes to indicate the different social classes, and some were extremely costly. Reliable stage machinery was introduced very slowly until Italian experts were imported for the preparation of court plays. After that, stage machinery was used with increasing skill and effectiveness, mostly to provide thrills and amazement for noble spectators.

The comedia sees events and human behavior from a preconceived point of view. Its basic preoccupation is not to investigate a human, ontological, or theological problem to uncover new perspectives or attitudes but to reaffirm established truths. Rarely are the spectators challenged in their values; rather, they are presented with illustrations of proper behavior, provided with moral direction, or given arguments for existing personal and social values. A favorite metaphor of this theater is the crucible, in which the dross is divided from pure matter. The comedia takes individuals, places them in a stressful situation, and observes whether they are as whole in character or intention as they presented themselves to be at the beginning. This experience, however, rarely produces a change in the individual; the main purpose is to reveal his essential merits or faults. Usually, there is no epiphany, no personal or moral reorientation, except in those plays that deal with religious conversion, or in the moment of death, when the character, however evil he may have been, seeks reconciliation with God. The providential view of the world, the importance of loyalty, the necessity to be faithful in love, the duty to defend one’s honor, and the need to be generous and courteous, courageous and modest, steadfast and prudent are never questioned. As a consequence, there is available a limited range of conflictive situations, which makes for the repetition of themes and solutions.

This uniformity of values from period to period and from author to author, in spite of personal differences that are, at times, considerable, suggests to critics that Spanish society was either frightfully closed within itself or functioned as a community in which there was very little difference of opinion. Neither of these hypotheses seems to fit the historical circumstances. Spain, in spite of its increasing decadence as a world power, continued to maintain close relations with Europe. Meanwhile, the social and economic conflicts that had surfaced at the beginning of the Renaissance still existed. The fact that the theater was, to a great extent, a product of the capital, performed in the presence of kings and nobles, high prelates, and rich bourgeois, may have caused it to serve as an artificial preserver of a worldview that did not correspond to reality. There are more recent points of view that charge the comedia with having become the propaganda arm of the establishment, for this reason refusing to advance a more realistic and critical view of society.

The basic values of the comedia are religion, duty to the king or collective authority, honor, and love. Religion is never challenged unless it is on the part of an infidel or a sinner who will either convert or be summarily punished. The remaining three secular values are often pitted against one another to create the necessary conflict that propels the drama. Love, although it is presented in nearly every play and although it is often the mover of the action, is never judged to be on equal standing with loyalty to liege lord or honor. In nearly every case, love must cede to other pressures. There is, however, a delightfully subversive play by Lope de Vega, often called the great conformist, El perro del hortelano (pb. 1618; The Gardener’s Dog, 1903), in which a noblewoman knowingly consents to a false arrangement so that she can marry her commoner secretary.

The great dramatic conflict of the comedia is the opposition between one’s honor and one’s loyalty to a higher authority—a liege lord or, more often, the ruling prince. This situation pits two basic values of the individual, values that make up the very nature of the nobleman. This conflict has often been misunderstood, and claims have been made that the overriding importance of kingship or the propagandistic purpose of the Golden Age drama obliged dramatists to put obedience to the king above even personal honor. This position cannot be sustained, however, because there is no play in which honor is placed below obedience. Indeed, in the case of the conflict between honor and king, it is impossible to make a clear choice because both elements are considered to be basic components of the culture. An individual cannot cease to be what he is by surrendering his honor. If he does that, he forgoes any other rights that he may have. In La mocedades del Cid f Castro y Bellvís, Rodrigo must take vengeance on his fiancée’s father, who has offended Rodrigo’s father, because otherwise, Rodrigo would not, as a dishonored man, be worthy of his fiancée’s love. At the same time, his fiancée, Jimena, cannot avoid seeking vengeance against the man she loves, Rodrigo, without forgoing her own standing and her own self-esteem. Yet, at the same time, the individual cannot forget that he belongs to a social group that is represented by the lord, prince, or king. If he acts against his ruler, he is acting against the collectivity that creates the social structure of which he is a member and which, indeed, gives him a reason for being. To challenge the representative of the group is to deny the group itself. As a consequence, neither choice is acceptable, and the dramatists of the Golden Age preferred to find an accommodation, however fragile though it might be, rather than create chaos. This unwillingness to choose between two equal values and the unwavering belief in a providential God prevent the comedia from developing a genuinely tragic sense of life.

On a dramatic level, this theater presents some unique characteristics. To begin with, although there were acrimonious controversies on the subject, the comedia refused steadfastly to adopt the concept of the unities that the learned commentators on sought to impose. Perhaps in part because the comedia was performed for the common people rather than for erudite scholars, playwrights did not feel obliged to obey literary authorities. The comedia is a freewheeling form, in which years may pass between acts, in which actions can take place in different countries, in which plots and subplots are often the staples of the play, and in which tragic and comic strands are mixed together. The seventeenth-century partisans of the comedia were quite certain that the genius of Lope de Vega was as great as that of any dramatist who had ever lived, and that he, therefore, had the right to establish his own school. This freedom from literary tradition, so clearly enunciated, was admired fervently by the German Romantics, who made a symbol of their literary rebellion. Yet, while the dramatists were proclaiming their independence from dramatic rules, the literature of the period was, in fact, very traditional in its observance of accepted norms.

Golden Age Playwrights

Lope de Vega, the recognized father of the new drama, is admired for his great facility as a poet and for his unerring dramatic sense. He is more lyric than philosophical or moralistic, adjectives that can be used for the other two great dramatists of the period, and . There are many plays by Lope de Vega that fail in their dramatic intent because of hurried construction or thinness of the material, but his great and even good plays are developed with remarkable assurance. Especially notable are the liveliness of dialogue, the handling of tempo, and the swift change from dramatic to lyric situations. Only a few of his best plays can be mentioned here: El caballero de Olmedo (pb. 1641; The Knight from Olmedo, 1961), a drama that moves from initial comedy to a steadily increasing conflict of jealousy and an intimation of tragedy, until love and inevitable death meet on a dark night; Peribáñez y el comendador de Ocaña (pb. 1614; Peribáñez, 1936), a tightly developed drama in which the honor of the peasant Peribáñez is threatened by his liege lord, developed on the brilliant opposition of the country-city duality so beloved by writers of the period, which reflected the influence of the Horatian theme of the Beatus ille; and El castigo sin venganza (pb. 1635; Justice Without Revenge, 1936), a dark play of infidelity, near-incest, and death taken from an Italian novella. In the latter play, the lecherous Duke of Ferrara, forced to marry for dynastic reasons, abandons his young wife to go to war. She and his young bastard son fall in love, consummate their love, and are finally denounced to the returning duke, who causes them to be killed while keeping secret the reason for their death. Lope de Vega’s most famous play, however, is Fuenteovejuna (pb. 1619; The Sheep Well, 1936). The drama is based on a peasant rebellion against a cruel and tyrannical overlord. The play has a complex development in which the concept of the harmony between the microcosm and the macrocosm is the determining structure. Lope de Vega establishes four different types of conflicts: the war between Portugal and Spain for the succession to the Castilian throne, the uprising of the comendador of Fuenteovejuna against his Castilian monarchs, the struggle between him and his peasants, and the lack of agreement among the peasants on the meaning of love. Lope de Vega unfolds these themes and then resolves them, going from the personal to the national level. In the process, he establishes the overpowering force of love, which not only unites people but also leads to an imposition of this unity on the disturbing element of society. Thus, the brutal death of the comendador is transformed into an act of social and, by implication, world harmony.

An equally important playwright is the Mercedarian monk, Gabriel Téllez, known as . Given his vocation, it is not surprising to find among his works many religious plays. The most important of these is El condenado por desconfiado (pb. 1634; The Saint and the Sinner, 1952; also known as Damned for Despair, 1986), more for the important topic of predestination and free will than for its dramatic coherence. Among the historical plays, La prudencia en la mujer (pb. 1634; Prudence in Woman, 1964) is noted for its successful presentation of the Queen-Regent Maria de Molina and for its undoubted reference to contemporary political events. The playwright was also capable of writing brilliant farces, such as Don Gil de la calzas verdes (pb. 1635; Don Gil of the Breeches Green, 1991), in which a woman who has been abandoned by her lover disguises herself as a man dressed in green, producing an unexpected number of suitors who take up the disguise, creating a confusion of events that seems unlikely to be unraveled. Tirso’s most famous play, however, is El burlador de Sevilla (pb. 1630; The Trickster of Seville, 1923). This work, the earliest literary treatment of the Don Juan myth, sprang from a variety of disparate elements, none of which pointed, in any way, to the formation of a figure that was to reverberate through the centuries. Tirso’s Don Juan is not a heroic figure; the playwright means to portray him and his friends as young profligates who take advantage of their influence at court to behave immorally and illegally. Don Juan has not yet become the overwhelming seducer to be found in later works. He is, rather, a trickster who comes to possess women either through disguise or trickery; it is not his charm that conquers them. Yet, within this reductionist view of the character, there are several elements that point toward his future development: He is fearless, disdainful of power and social conditions, and a manipulator of other people’s unspoken feelings.

Associated with these playwrights, at least chronologically, are , Luis Vélez de Guevara, and Antonio Mira de Amescua. Ruiz de Alarcón is known for his preoccupation with social manners and for his calm, reasoned approach to drama. There is no exuberance or passion for Lope de Vega, nor is there an interest in personality evident in Tirso de Molina. The Mexican-born playwright, who had a physical deformity, works within the theme of social relationships in measured tones and carefully crafted pieces. His best-known plays are La verdad sospechosa (pb. 1630; The Truth Suspected, 1927) and Las paredes oyen (pr. 1617; The Walls Have Ears, 1942). The first deals with the complications brought about by a pathological liar, while the second explores the consequences of gossip in society. Vélez de Guevara, a writer of considerable talent, is known for his propensity for verbal embroidery. His best play is Reinar después de morir (pr. 1653; rule after death), which repeats the story of the love of Inés de Castro and Prince Pedro of Portugal. The unauthorized marriage of the two young people provokes the king into ordering the death of Inés. When Pedro finally becomes king, he crowns the dead Inés queen and orders that obeisance be paid to her enthroned body. Mira de Amescua is known for intensifying the general lines of Lope de Vega’s formula. He complicated the action, often losing himself in incidental events. He sought to amaze his spectators with sudden changes, brilliant set pieces, or surprises in the plot, losing track of the structure of his dramas. His best-known work is El esclavo del demonio (pr. c. 1608; The Devil’s Slave, 1939), which belongs to a category of plays known as comedias de santo, plays that deal with sin and repentance and with the problem of predestination and free will, a topic of great theological interest during this time. In this play, a friar known for his devotion falls into temptation and, together with a woman, dedicates himself to crime and to the pleasures of the flesh. He makes a pact with the Devil, but the reward for the friar is only a simulacrum of a woman, which turns into a skeleton while in his arms. This image exemplifies the concept of disabusement (desengaño), which was so prevalent in the period and which is best seen in the dramas of Calderón. Having finally recognized the insignificance of human life and its pleasures, the friar is moved to repentance.

It was up to to develop to their full extent some of the great themes of the comedia. Born at the beginning of the century, he began to write plays at a time when Lope de Vega, although still vigorously active, was reaching the end of his life, and the comedia seemed to be entering a phase of settling down rather than of innovation. The Jesuit-trained Calderón de la Barca brought to his drama an organization of thought, a severity of mind and principles, and a manner of arguing and development of action that reflected both his intellectual background and his strong moral sense. The open, spontaneous outpourings of Lope de Vega were replaced by a rhetorical style, a rigidity of thought, and even a mechanistic production of images. Although Calderón de la Barca’s production extends from mere plays of intrigue to mythological plays in which the full theatrical resources of palace productions were employed, he is best known for his honor plays and for his plays on the transitoriness of life on this earth. His honor dramas include El alcalde de Zalamea (pr. 1643; The Mayor of Zalamea, 1853), El médico de su honra (pb. 1637; The Surgeon of His Honor, 1853), A secreto agravio, secreta venganza (pb. 1637; Secret Vengeance for Secret Insult, 1961), and El pintor de su deshonra (pb. 1650; The Painter of His Dishonor, 1853). The last three deal with the murder of the wife to avenge one’s honor and are uncompromising in their affirmation of this right. There exists much controversy regarding the interpretation of these plays. Critical opinion has gone from condemnation of the playwright for maintaining such an unchristian attitude to claims that Calderón was, without taking sides, merely reflecting contemporary attitudes to the idea that Calderón was really criticizing the perversion of Christian morals represented by the murders to the suggestion that he used these effective dramatic situations to compel a reflection on the right of the individual to self-respect and social dignity. Calderón, in these plays, gives a variety of hints that are difficult to coalesce into one coherent viewpoint.

The one play of Calderón that is known worldwide is La vida es sueño (pr. 1635; Life Is a Dream, 1830). Its point of departure is that life is to eternity what a dream is to life: Both life and dreams seem real while one experiences them but are nothing but a passing moment when compared with their corresponding realities. Segismundo is an Everyman who, in his pride, considers himself fit to challenge authority, both terrestrial and divine. When placed momentarily in a position of power, he abuses it violently, thus proving his incapacity to check his arrogance and his passions. When he is returned to the prison from which he had been taken while drugged, he cannot ascertain whether that moment of power was real or merely a dream. He decides that man does not have the capacity to find orientation by himself in this world and chooses divine guidance. The recognition of his dependence is the signal that he has comprehended the limitations of life, and this leads him to the acceptance of God and the pursuit of the good.

Another facet of Calderón’s genius is to be found in his autos sacramentales. He became the most important author of these circumstantial religious pieces, which were commissioned by the city of Madrid; his place was so unchallenged that he was their sole producer for the last three decades of his life. The thematic vehicles that he used were taken mostly from the Bible and from mythology, and their purpose was to dramatize in the form of allegory the significance of the Sacraments. Although Calderón is considered the greatest practitioner of this genre, the tradition, as indicated, goes back to the Middle Ages and was built on the contributions of many writers. The autos became particularly important as a means of fighting heresies and enemies of the Catholic faith, and they were used not only as a means of celebration but also as a way of teaching Christian doctrine to the masses.

End of the Golden Age

Francisco de Rojas Zorrilla and are the last of the major dramatists of the period. They are considered to be thematically derivative writers, but each has a particular approach to his task. Rojas Zorrilla, who wrote serious as well as comic plays, displays a more understanding attitude toward women and the question of honor, as evidenced in the humane endings of his plays. His Del rey abajo, ninguno (pb. 1650; None Beneath the King, 1924) rejects the immolation of women in the defense of honor, although it does not renounce man’s right to take revenge on the offending man. Moreto y Cabaña, on the other hand, is described by critics as a man of measure and order. His two best-known plays are seen as examples of a comic spirit in which his tolerance of human frailty is evidenced. El lindo don Diego (pb. 1662; the dandy Don Diego) treats the topic of the self-centered dandy with great success, while El desdén con el desdén (pb. 1654; Love’s Victory: Or, The School for Pride, 1825) deals with a woman who vainly challenges the traditional view of her sex, according to which her life is supposed to center on love and marriage. Moreto y Cabaña, as did Molière, rejects the woman’s stance as contrary to nature; the protagonist eventually relents by falling in love, thus reaffirming the established order.

Public theater, together with other literary forms, suffered a decline in the middle of the seventeenth century. The closure of the theaters for more than five years, except for a brief interval, provoked a disbanding of troupes and a general decline. At the same time that this was happening, the existence of a theater called Coliseo, ostensibly public but given to royal performances, further contributed to the demise of the corrales. This theater had a proscenium arch, painted scenery, and sophisticated stage machinery that was introduced by Italian technicians. The movement from popular to court theater, which included spectacular stagings in the royal gardens of the Retiro, along with other circumstances, brought to a close the creative phase of the comedia. Although Golden Age plays continued to be written, they were largely tired imitations of earlier efforts. Antonio de Zamora and José de Cañizares, the epigones of this theater, although good technicians, failed to produce a single work of note. Indeed, it was in the French theater that reworkings of Spanish plays acquired new dramatic vitality.

Eighteenth Century

With the death of Charles II in 1700, the Habsburg line came to an end in Spain and was replaced by the French Bourbons. Philip V, a grandson of Louis XIV, and his Italian wife began a long line of rulers who sought to bring the country in line with the predominant French culture of the eighteenth century. Among the reforms that were effected were the suppression of the autos sacramentales, the banning of the Jesuit order, and the modernization of the theaters. The overall results were not entirely satisfactory because Spain finished the century only partially incorporated into European society.

As far as the theater is concerned, the battleground was the introduction of the neoclassical tragedy, a genre whose earlier form had not had success in Spain and that required a complete reordering of aesthetic values for the Spanish public. The individuals who sought to promote neoclassical tragedy were not talented and trained playwrights but rather members of an educated elite whose tastes and ethical preoccupations were not in harmony with the public that they sought to influence. The resulting standoff between reformers and traditionalists made possible the entrance into Spain of a large number of translations from the French and the Italian as well as operatic performances, which were beginning to acquire great popularity. The first Spanish play that is worth noting from this period is La Hormesinda (pr. 1770), by Nicolás Fernández de Moratín, a play that deals with Pelayo, the hero of the first battle for the Reconquest of Spain. This showpiece of the reformist movement failed as a neoclassical work, however, not only because of its exaggerated nationalism (which overwhelmed the nuances necessary for tragic situations) but also because of its intense and meaningless rhetoric, a regrettable element of Spanish theater that persisted well into the twentieth century. Other writers who tried their hand at introducing high tragedy were José Cadalso y Vazquez with his Don Sancho García (pr. 1771), Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos with El Pelayo (pr. 1769), and Ignacio López de Ayala with Numancia destruída (pb. 1775; the destruction of Numantia).

Few writers of the eighteenth century merit particular attention. One is Ramón de la Cruz, who specialized in a short comic piece known as sainete. This genre is actually the continuation of the interludes of the sixteenth century, and it depends for its entertainment value on popular customs and characters as well as on satire and topical allusions. Ramón de la Cruz wrote more than one hundred of these short plays, and they are prized as lively documents of Spanish society of the period. Another playwright of note during this period is Vicente Garcia de la Huerta, whose tragedy Raquel (pr. 1778) is the only eighteenth-century play that can still be appreciated. It is based on a play by Lope de Vega and dramatizes the love of King Alfonso VIII for the Jewess Rachel. The play sets up the duality of love versus duty to nation, and although it is not able to completely forgo its dependence on nationalistic fervor, it manages to introduce genuine human sentiments and, therefore, rescue itself from the failure to which previous efforts were condemned. Little was learned from the implicit lessons of this work, however, and neoclassical tragedy played out its string with Pelayo (pr. 1805), by Manuel José Quintana, another variant on the theme that had been treated by others earlier.

The only writer of this epoch who managed to achieve both popular and artistic success was Leandro Fernández de Moratín. Unlike his self-conscious father, Leandro dedicated himself to comedy. The moralistic preoccupation of the eighteenth century is not missing in his works, but his critical view of society and its foibles is both charmingly and effectively presented. He understood the goal of comedy to be the revelation of the vices and errors that are common in society and the affirmation of truth and virtue. His success results from his ability to present a critical viewpoint while not ignoring the sentimental side of the plot. His plays include El viejo y la niña (pr. 1790; the old man and the young girl), La comedia nueva: O, El café (pr. 1792; the new comedy), and his most famous work, El sí de las niñas (pr. 1806; When a Girl Says Yes, 1929). His play observes fairly rigorously the unities of time, space, and action. Despite these limitations, it unfolds with great naturalness both in its action and in its language. The play deals with the arranged marriage of an old gentleman and a young girl who is in love with the old man’s nephew. The self-interest of the mother, who pushes the young girl to an inappropriate marriage; the young girl’s inability to speak her mind; and the old man’s self-deception about the feasibility of such a union are revealed with wit and feeling.

Nineteenth Century

Spain underwent great turmoil at the beginning of the new century. The Napoleonic invasion, the rebellion of the Spaniards against the French, the various events connected with the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy, and the liberals’ efforts to establish a constitutional monarchy impeded the normal development of cultural life. Indeed, the dominant cultural events of this period were the flight of those Spaniards who had supported French rule in the hope of bringing about a reform in Spanish society and, later, the exile of the liberals who had sought in vain to obtain constitutional guarantees from Ferdinand VII when he was restored to the throne. Romanticism came late to Spain when these liberals returned at the death of Ferdinand VII (1835), and it had, therefore, the flavor of a fashion rather than the force of an idea. Moreover, because Spanish theater never embraced neoclassicism fully, the Romantic rebellion did not have the function of a renovating force as it had in France.

The general situation of Spanish theater had not changed much in two centuries. There were still only two theaters in Madrid, the Corral de Príncipe and the Corral de la Cruz, although they were different structures. It was at this time that the traditional separation in the seating of men and women finally came to an end. The theatergoing public was still so limited in number that impresarios were obliged to change the billing every few days. The great theatrical triumphs of the Romantic period can, therefore, claim performances that ranged in number from only seven to fifteen.

The Romantic period began in 1834 with the performances of La conjuración de Veneciaaño de 1310 (the conspiracy of Venice) by and Macías by Mariano José de Larra, the first of which, symbolically enough, was written during the author’s exile in France. The first Romantic play to enjoy great success was Don Álvaro: O, La fuerza del sino (pr. 1835; Don Álvaro: Or, The Force of Destiny, 1964) by Ángel de Saavedra, also known as the Duke of Rivas. Spanish Romantic drama leans heavily on historical plots; uses passionate, absolute love as a vehicle; and has fatality as its major theme. Romantic conflict occurs between the individual and an uncomprehending order that causes the death of the protagonist. The year 1835 marks the apogee of Romantic drama with the performance of Don Álvaro. The protagonist is a man of obscure origin but of great merit. His valor, courtesy, and tenderness, however, are all negated by an adverse fate that pursues him tenaciously, even seeking him out when he retires from the world by becoming a monk. In the end, unable to control or understand this cosmic persecution, he commits suicide.

Following immediately on the heels of the Duke of Rivas was Antonio García Gutiérrez. Although the author of many dramas, such as Simón Bocanegra (pr. 1843), Juan Lorenzo (pr. 1865), and Venganza Catalana (1864; Catalan vengeance), he is best known for his El trovador (pr. 1836; the troubadour), another play of love and fatality. Also writing around this time was Manuel Bretón de los Herreros, a comic writer whose best-known play is Muérete y verás! (pr. 1837; Die and You Will See!, 1935), and Juan Eugenio de Hartzenbusch y Martínez, who retells the story of the unhappy lovers of Teruel in Los amantes de Teruel (pb. 1837; The Lovers of Teruel, 1938), leaning heavily on the fatality theme. The last of the Romantic dramatists was , who resurrected another play from the Golden Age with his Don Juan Tenorio (pr. 1844; English translation, 1944). Zorrilla y Moral continued the figure that had gained momentum with Molière and with Lorenzo da Ponte’s libretto for Mozart’s opera. The play is divided into two parts, one dealing with the libertinage of Don Juan, the other with his slow movement toward repentance, culminating in divine forgiveness as a consequence of the pure and self-sacrificing love of the heroine. The change in the denouement shows a telling difference in ideology between the Romantic play and the work of Tirso de Molina written two centuries earlier.

Zorrilla y Moral brought to a close the short period of Romantic drama, which was followed by a more realistic genre known as “high comedy.” Abandoning the destiny theme and the violent passions so prevalent in the previous period, the playwrights of this era focused on the mainsprings of society and its individuals. They sought to uncover the real motivations, both psychological and cultural, of their characters, eschewing the highly charged scenes of the Romantic period and concentrating on physical circumstances rather than emotions. One can trace a slow movement toward melodrama in this new drama.

Ventura de la Vega, regarded as the precursor of this group, anticipates their concerns most clearly in El hombre del mundo (pr. 1845; The Man of the World, 1935). The wide world of the Romantic period is now restricted to the narrow confines of the bourgeoisie. Less emphasis is placed on the power of the word to sway the public, while more dramatic weight is carried by the situation, thus making for better-integrated plays. The representatives of this new drama, playwrights who were brought up during the Romantic period, are Adelardo López de Ayala y Herrera and Manuel Tamayo y Baus. López de Ayala provides an interesting mixture of the Romantics’ identification with the people and a neoclassical preoccupation with reforming society. In his best-known play, El tanto por ciento (pr. 1861; the percentage cut), the self-interest of people leads them to prey on a man and a woman of noble spirit who are guided solely by honor, loyalty, and love. The play is marred by a sentimental denouement in which the noble pair emerge victorious from the intrigue. Perhaps as a consequence of the commercial and industrial development of the nineteenth century, the predominant themes of this theater are the conflicts created by the opposition of two distinct types: the individual whose obsessive quest for wealth overrides all other personal and social concerns, and the traditional, value-directed person, often represented by a true, unselfish lover, unconcerned about money and, therefore, easy prey for the unscrupulous. In Consuelo (pr. 1878; English translation, 1935), López de Ayala returns to the theme of economic and social interest over true love. The protagonist prefers a rich, unscrupulous man over a dedicated and poor one. Her unhappy marriage eventually leads to the loss of her husband, the death of her mother, and the disdain of the former true lover.

shared with López de Ayala the public’s admiration. He wrote a great variety of plays, from historical dramas to thesis plays, but is best remembered for his La locura de amor (pr. 1855; love madness) and Un drama nuevo (pr. 1867; A New Drama, 1915). He preferred prose to verse because of its greater naturalness, and he was particularly interested in uncovering the moral reasons for his protagonists’ behavior. La locura de amor treats the tragic fate of Queen Juana of Spain, whose intense love and jealousy toward her husband, Philip, cause her to become mad. A New Drama develops with some success, but with exaggerated theatrical effects, the theme of the play-within-a-play. The central character, a comic actor, insists on playing the role of a husband deceived by his young wife. The situation, ironically, parallels the real circumstances of the actor, who, when he discovers, while acting, the infidelity of his wife, kills the man who in real life as well as on the stage has seduced his wife. With Tamayo y Baus, the so-called realistic theater came to an end, and the stage was occupied until the end of the nineteenth century by the controversial figure of .

Echegaray enjoyed a long and productive career, winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1904. Yet, in spite of the undoubted success and international prestige that crowned Echegaray’s career, modern critics have been harsh in their judgment of his works. In particular, they have seen falsity in the grandiloquence of his expression, in the psychological exaggeration of the situations, and in the derivativeness of his dramatic art. He fuses the grandstanding of the Romantic writers with the social and moral preoccupations of the writers of “high comedy.” In the process, he creates a kind of melodrama in which emotional responses take precedence over reason and naturalness of content. In O locura o santidad (pr. 1877; Folly or Saintliness, 1895), the protagonist, a respected and wise man whose daughter is about to be engaged to a duke, goes mad and is eventually taken to an insane asylum when he finds out that he is not the respected son of a bourgeois family but the illegitimate son of a maid. Echegaray’s masterpiece, El gran Galeoto (pr. 1891; The Great Galeoto, 1895), develops the thesis that society, with its gossip and propensity for evil, is the cause of the destruction of a noble union. Insinuations that a young man protected by a generous friend is the lover of the latter’s wife provoke a series of reactions that lead to a duel, death, social condemnation, and, eventually, like the book on Galahad that brought Paolo and Francesca to their adulterous union, to the realization of something that originally did not exist.

Drama of Social Commitment

Echegaray dominated Spanish theater for the last twenty years of the nineteenth century. The only antidote to his drama was supplied by two socially committed writers who made their appearance toward the end of the century, novelist and dramatist Joaquín Dicenta y Benedicto and the novelist Dicenta’s early work was very conventional and was influenced by the dominant post-Romantic mode of the period. In 1895, however, his Juan José was performed to unexpected success. Spanish theater was not accustomed to treating the lower classes as individuals whose problems deserved to be taken seriously. Dicenta adapted the old theme of honor and jealousy to a proletarian setting; while there are references to social conditions, and although the motive that propels the final tragedy is physical deprivation, the drama is essentially one of honor. In the process, however, the lower classes are presented, for the first time since Golden Age drama, as having dignity and a sense of self-value.

Although he wrote some pieces directly for the stage, Pérez Galdós owes his reputation as a playwright to adaptations of his novels. What he contributed to the stage was a concern for the reality of human emotions and situations rather than a renovation of dramatic techniques. Pérez Galdós was interested in the opposition between two visions of life and society: that of individuals who are paralyzed in their attitudes and feelings by the weight of tradition and customs and that of individuals who seek the truth about people and events and are, therefore, willing to challenge established views. In Realidad (pr. 1892; reality), the old problem of adultery is not treated with the automatic responses that countless other plays present but is seen from a new perspective when the husband realizes that his values are closer to those of the seducer than the values of his wife. El abuelo (pr. 1904; The Grandfather, 1910) sets another well-worn convention. An old count has come to visit his daughter-in-law, now widowed, to discover which of his two granddaughters is the “real” one. His preoccupation with the legitimacy of his proud and noble line, however, is brought to an end when he discovers that the girl to whom he responds and who is devoted to him is the illegitimate granddaughter.

The Twentieth Century

The earnest but essentially nondramatic efforts of Pérez Galdós were replaced by the bourgeois theater of Jacinto Benavente y Martínez. The considerable production of this Nobel Prize winner includes a variety of plays, ranging from rural dramas to plays for children. In spite of this, his theater is easily identifiable by its characteristic preoccupations and dramatic techniques. Interestingly, although Benavente y Martínez was reputed to know every detail of dramatic construction, his theater depends heavily on narration to develop the action, while dialogue is relegated to a secondary role. He was reluctant to deal seriously with the central issues of his society, preferring to maintain an aloof, skeptical attitude. In spite of his large and varied production, Benavente y Martínez is invariably connected with a high bourgeois world of elegant salons and of individuals bored with life. Thematically, Benavente y Martínez deals with the same material that served the “high comedy” writers: the tyranny of social conventions, hypocrisy, and falseness. What he removed from his plays was the high-blown rhetorical style, the charged words, and the empty passion. Pleasant as is his theater and smooth as is his technique, one leaves his plays with a sense of insubstantiality.

Two of his works, however, escape the ironic indifference that dominates the rest of his production: La malquerida (pr. 1913; The Passion Flower, 1917) and Los intereses creados (pr. 1907; The Bonds of Interest, 1915). The Passion Flower set against a rural backdrop, presents the theme of the power of passion, which in this case is incest. Esteban is in love with his stepdaughter, whose fiancé has been killed. The investigation into the death of the young man leads to the discovery of the culpable love of Esteban, to the horror of the mother. When it seems that the father repents his error and the mother is willing to forgive, the stepdaughter’s passionate love for her stepfather is revealed, and the mother, unwilling to see the daughter commit the ultimate sin, kills her husband.

The Bonds of Interestemploys commedia dell’arte characters to make clear in a devastating way that there exists an unavoidable connection between idealism and materialism and that the very existence of one depends on the other. Although Benavente y Martínez continued to write for many years after he first achieved international success, nothing in his later production added to his fame. Although he was instrumental in removing from the stage the rhetoric and verbal fireworks of the late nineteenth century, he did not bequeath to Spanish drama a more critical attitude toward the reality of human life.

A contemporary of Benavente y Martínez, Carlos Arniches continued the tradition of Lope de Rueda, Cervantes, and Ramón de la Cruz with a modern version of the sainete, a one-act play. Arniches and others used the considerable cultural differences in Spanish regions and types to stimulate a popular, optimistic view of life. Arniches specialized in portraying the people of Madrid—those who lived in the old, traditional neighborhoods. Normally, the sainete utilizes a love triangle of two men who court a young girl. Although at one point, she is usually bedazzled by the fast-talking, self-important, nearly delinquent young man, eventually, she comes to marry his hardworking, well-intentioned, and serious rival. The genre lends itself to a folkloric representation of life rather than critical analysis. It is distinguished by a lively, humorous, colloquial speech whose intentional distortions are used for comic effects. Equally popular were the brothers Searfín Álvarez Quintero and Joaquín Álvarez Quinteroro. They concentrated on the Andalusian milieu and contributed to the continuation of the stereotypical image of Andalusia as a land of sun, song, and smiles. They ignored all the problems that beset that region to depict a near-patriarchal society, perhaps as an antidote to the raging poverty that has characterized its history.

A group of minor dramatists contributed to Spanish theatrical life during this time: Manuel Linares Rivas y Astray, a follower of Benavente y Martínez without the latter’s sense of irony; Eduardo Marquina, who reintroduced poetic drama and whose En Flandes se ha puesto el sol (pr. 1909; the sun has set in Flanders) recalls nostalgically the lost glory and traditions of Spain; Gregorio Martínez Sierra, best known for his Canción de cuna (pr. 1911; The Cradle Song, 1917), whose idealization of womanhood is his defining characteristic; and Pedro Muñoz Seca, who wrote comic plays featuring outrageous situations and verbal high jinks. He is best known for La venganza de don Mendo (pr. 1918; the vengeance of Don Mendo), a highly successful parody of the history plays of the Romantic period. There are also plays of a strikingly different mood by whose ontological preoccupations leave behind the narrow social problems treated by his contemporaries. His conception of drama was to present a schematic action reduced to its essence, allowing for only the most relevant of passions to enter a play. It is logical that he should rely on myths as the vehicles for the basic nature of his concerns. The philosopher Unamuno, however, was no more able to dramatize his themes than he was able to novelize them. The nondramatic quality of his works has, therefore, relegated them to closet dramas.

The only real innovator of Spanish theater during this period was Ramón María del Valle-Inclán. He was so far removed from the thematic and dramatic sensibility of his time that he had considerable difficulty being performed and being recognized as a dramatic author. His absence from the theater—first, because of his vision of what constituted theater, and second, because of political considerations—has been reevaluated by modern scholars, and he is now considered to be among the most modern Spanish playwrights. The basic reforms of Valle-Inclán’s theater are the abandonment of the conflictive situation as the motivating force of the play; the use of a cinematographic technique requiring multiple actions or fast, sequential actions; the rejection of bourgeois values, which are seen to be nothing but a control mechanism; and the use of setting as an active participant in the dramatic situation. Valle-Inclán also abandoned the use of plot as a symbolic ordering for the theme of the work. Valle-Inclán’s dramatic development can be traced from an early, decadent phase to a transitional period and, finally, after a break, to an explosion of originality with his esperpentos, a genre that he originated. The comedias bárbaras (barbaric comedies) constitute a trilogy that presents a primitive world of emotions in nineteenth-century Galicia.

To take the place of the conflictive situation, Valle-Inclán introduced the principle of duality of response. His earlier plays employ the duality of heroism and absurdity; later, especially in the esperpentos, he juxtaposed the tragic and the grotesque. The transitional theater of Valle-Inclán came to fruition with Divinas palabras (pb. 1920; Divine Words, 1968). The play continues the world of the barbaric trilogy while opening the door to a later theater. The plot concerns a deformed child who is the center of a struggle between two women who seek to exploit his condition to display him in country fairs. Mari-Gaila wins, and she goes from fair to fair, pleased with the freedom that this entails. This desire for freedom leads her to a sexual liaison with a darkly compelling figure. When she is found by the villagers making love to him, she is dragged to the village and presented to her weak husband for punishment. He tries to calm them by uttering the words of Christ regarding casting the first stone, but they react in anger. He then repeats the words in Latin. The incantation of the mysterious words arouses their fears and superstitions, and they quickly dissolve. The ambiguity of the plot and the difficulty in focusing on a discernible theme are offset by the powerful presence of the cultural background and the landscape. The tension of the play is created by the opposition between the primitive, pagan view of life and the implicit Christian context.

For Valle-Inclán, contemporary Spain is a grotesque variant of European civilization. For this reason, it is not possible to look at it with normal vision, but only through eyes that systematically deform its reality. Tragic emotions are to be counterbalanced by the grotesque elements that surround the individual. The artist must remain impassive before the human farce played out by poseurs. Yet, the dramatic reality of Valle-Inclán’s two major esperpentos, Luces de bohemia (pb. 1920; Bohemian Lights, 1967) and Los cuernos de don Friolera (pb. 1921; The Grotesque Farce of Mr. Punch the Cuckold, 1991), attest not an indifference to the human condition but a cold anger at the depravity of society. The Grotesque Farce of Mr. Punch the Cuckold is particularly meaningful because it destroys the traditional myth of sexual honor so much discussed in Spanish theater through the centuries.

The desire to reform Spanish theater and to bring to an end its dependence on realistic representation was shared by Jacinto Grau Delgado. Like Valle-Inclán, he was ignored by both critics and public, and like his contemporary he refused to adapt himself to the dominant mode. His production moved from tragedy to farce. El conde Alarcos (pr. 1917; the Count Alarcos) is a dark and uncompromising tragedy based on a medieval ballad that fails in the author’s intent to avoid the clichés of earlier historical plays; more successful is El señor de Pigmalión (pr. 1923; Mr. Pygmalion), a tragic farce in which the creator of a group of puppets is attacked and finally killed by his own creations.

The most successful playwright of the first part of the twentieth century and the only one to have acquired undoubted international standing is Federico García Lorca. His theater is based on poetry and feeling as expressive vehicles, and his major theme, presented under different guises, is the stifling of human emotions and of freedom by nature and circumstances. This inevitable defeat of man and his passions is conveyed through a carefully wrought poetic language based on myth and history, nature and literature. Instinct is destroyed by authority, love is rendered impossible by one’s nature or by the intervention of others. The central images have a strong telluric force that gives his theater a mythic quality. Although strongly aware of the social conditions of Spain, García Lorca does not enter fully into this arena. His death gave him a political symbolism that was not warranted by his life. It is true that he was moving toward a more politically aware position, but his early death prevented him from realizing this process.

García Lorca’s first works are essentially poetic. Even the protagonist of Mariana Pineda (pr. 1927; English translation, 1950), whose heroine is the legendary figure who was executed for her connection with liberals, becomes, in the hands of García Lorca, a delicate flower trembling with passion rather than the symbol of political freedom. García Lorca’s characters, although firmly fixed within Spanish culture, must be seen as generic types. Their circumstances may be Andalusian, but their aspirations and emotions have a universal application. There is a full rejection of the social mores that dominated the theater of the period. García Lorca’s earlier theater is influenced by Symbolism, to which the earlier Valle-Inclán was also indebted, and his later work by Surrealism, which for a variety of reasons achieved little penetration in Spain. The avant-garde, experimental work Así que pasan cinco años (wr. 1931; When Five Years Pass, 1941) and two incomplete plays represent a less well-recognized side of his dramaturgy, as does the Chekhovian Doña Rosita la soltera: O, El lenguaje de las flores (pr. 1935; Doña Rosita the Spinster: Or, The Language of the Flowers, 1941).

García Lorca’s best-known theater is represented by the trilogy of rural tragedies, each unfolding the essentially tragic condition of man as a being unable to find fulfillment: Bodas de sangre (pr. 1933; Blood Wedding, 1939), Yerma (pr. 1934; English translation, 1941), and La casa de Bernarda Alba (wr. 1936; The House of Bernarda Alba, 1947). All three deal with sexual frustration as a symbol of unfulfillment. Failure is inevitable, no matter what actions people take. In Blood Wedding, the escape of the lovers from their families leads to tragedy; in Yerma, the unwillingness of the unhappily married heroine to give herself to the man she loves similarly leads to death; and in The House of Bernarda Alba both those who conform to their circumstances and those who fight against them encounter disaster. The failure cannot be ascribed to personal weaknesses because both passivity and activity lead to the same end. Moreover, the poetic world of García Lorca, which places these characters within the setting of seasons and crops, water and animals, astral bodies and vegetal cycles, impels the audience to consider events not personally or circumstantially, but as part of the natural order of things.

Spanish Civil War

The Spanish Civil War not only cut off an important new direction of Spanish theater but also brought about the emigration of many intellectuals and writers. The best Spanish theater was produced by three dramatists in exile, Rafael Alberti, Alejandro Casona, and Max Aub Alberti is the most political of the group. Influenced by expressionism and by his political convictions, he has sought systematically to reform Spanish theater. A painter and a poet before a dramatist, Alberti constructed a dramaturgy characterized by a sense of movement and form. El adefesio (pb. 1944; the absurdity) unites both his social and his artistic concerns in his denunciation of his narrow, superstitious society. The play uses a schematic plot and symbolic, caricatured personages to effect a criticism of blind authority and social hypocrisy.

Casona’s theater, written mostly in exile, was introduced into Spain late, and at a time when Spain was unreceptive to Casona’s moral and psychological preoccupations. Yet, Casona’s work, to the degree that it represented a departure from the realistic theater that continued to be in vogue in Spain up to the 1960s, must be classified as an innovative force. Prohibido suicidarse en primavera (pr. 1937; No Suicide Allowed in Spring, 1950) and Los árboles mueren de pie (pr. 1949; trees die standing up) unfold the central theme of Casona’s work, the struggle between illusion and reality. Illusion is the refuge of those who cannot fight successfully against adversity, but only an acceptance of reality can bring about an acceptable resolution.

Aub began with an antinaturalist theater, moved to an activist phase during the Civil War, and wrote his best plays in exile. These plays are a reflection on the bitterness of war and suffering: San Juan (pr. 1942) narrates the plight of exiled Jews, Morir por cerrar los ojos (pr. 1944; to die for shutting one’s eyes) chronicles the surrender and defeat of France, and El rapto de Europa (pr. 1943; the rape of Europe) repeats the theme of exiles in flight from the Nazis, but this time it includes a woman whose dedication to aiding the afflicted represents the humanitarianism that Aub found missing during his own experiences.

One important comic playwright was Enrique Jardiel Poncela. His comedy rejected the traditional formula of puns and exaggerated situations and was based on the whimsical and the unreal. Eloisa está debajo de un almendro (pr. 1940; Eloise is under an almond tree) and Los ladrones somos genta honrada (pr. 1942; we thieves are honorable people) are good examples of Jardiel Poncela’s application of logic to absurd situations, thus creating comedies that require an intellectual approach to enjoyment.

A similar attraction to the logic of the absurd is to be found in Miguel Mihura Santos. Mihura was a comic genius whose best work, Tres sombreros de copa (pr. 1952; Three Top Hats, 1968), written in 1932, was performed twenty years later because, like many other playwrights before him, he could not convince impresarios to stage a play that was so far removed from dominant tastes. The revolution that Mihura proposes in the play—the importance of irrationality, rebellion against verbal forms, the clash between the dull world of the bourgeois mentality and the aspirations of free spirits—represents the unrealized revitalization of the Spanish theater.

The Franco Years

The civil war distorted the development of Spanish drama. During and after the conflict, plays were staged for their propaganda value. After his victory, Francisco Franco imposed strict censorship, which was relaxed slowly over the thirty-five years of his dictatorship but which was still in effect at his death in 1975. Most of the 1950s and 1960s theater was self-absorbed and withdrawn, both theatrically and thematically. Although before the war, the conservative taste of the middle class and the financial interests of the impresario determined the fate of plays, political considerations became equally important after the war—the postwar theater concentrated on entertainment, some inoffensive social criticism, and occasional moral issues. Little drama dealt with the lower classes or with their problems. Some of the dramatists of this period are Juan Ignacio Luca de Tena, José María Pemán, José López-Rubio, Joaquín Calvo Sotelo, and Víctor Ruiz Iriarte.

A new epoch in Spanish drama began with the staging of Antonio Buero Vallejo'sHistoria de una escalera (pr. 1949; Story of a Staircase, 1955). From the beginning of his career, Buero Vallejo viewed Spanish society with intense, serious eyes, seeing the lack of social concern, the self-imposed blindness of the people to avoid a recognition of their condition, the moral ambiguity, the selfishness, the lack of freedom. He accomplished for nearly thirty years the impossible task of criticizing Spain without incurring political difficulties. He achieved this not only because of his undoubted moral sincerity but also because he developed an oblique way of dealing with social problems. His characters are often historical—such as Velázquez in Las meninas (pr. 1960; English translation, 1987), Goya in El sueño de la razón (pr. 1970; The Sleep of Reason, 1985), and Larra in La detonación (1977; The Shot, 1989)—who lived in critical moments of Spanish history and who had to confront the same moral and political problems that were present during Franco’s regime. Buero Vallejo has constantly renewed his dramatic structure and made use of an “immersion” technique, a device in which the spectator is forced to confront the same problems that face the dramatic personage. He was the first to deal with the traumatic effects of the Civil War in El tragaluz (pr. 1967; the skylight). It is a measure of the forces that controlled Spanish theater that a reflection on the event that shook modern Spain could be staged only thirty years after that event took place. Not even Buero Vallejo, however, was able to get his play dealing with police torture, La doble historia del doctor Valmy (pb. 1967; The Double Case History of Doctor Valmy, 1967), staged during Franco’s life.

Although Buero Vallejo successfully maintained a dialogue with fellow Spaniards, Alfonso Sastre, with his more direct, uncompromising attack on Franco’s Spain, could not get his work performed. His plays were either completely censored or were allowed to be performed for one night by student groups. In his articles and in his works, he maintains the unavoidable social responsibility of the writer, the need to keep alive the cry of freedom. Escuadra hacia la muerte (pr. 1953; The Condemned Squad, 1961), in which individuals assume an existentialist attitude despite their limitations; La mordaza (1954; the gag), in which he transposes tyranny from a national to a familial setting; Guillermo Tell tiene los ojos tristes (pr. 1960; Sad Are the Eyes of William Tell, 1970), a direct attack on dictatorship; and La sangre y la ceniza (pr. 1965; blood and ashes), a play about intolerance, all form a testimony to his untiring struggle.

The 1960s saw the emergence of many younger playwrights who became known collectively as the “realistic generation.” Their interest in the sociopolitical problems of Spain drew them together, as did their constant struggle to be allowed to perform and be performed. Their theater, in large measure, was one of protest. Their fight against Franco absorbed their creative energy, and some of their plays lost considerable relevance with the change in the country's circumstances. Lauro Olmo, José Martín Recuerda, José María Rodríguez Méndez, Carlos Muñiz, and Antonio Gala formed part of this generation.

The Post-Franco Period

The death of Franco and the reestablishment of democracy and political freedoms provoked an explosion in the theater. Plays that could not be performed before were staged, and performances ranged from the traditional to the determinedly avant-garde. The plays of many dramatists who were born in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s were staged only after Franco’s death. Two playwrights, José Ruibal and Francisco Nieva, distinguished themselves by portraying the irrationality of modern life, which led them to develop a correspondingly hallucinatory dramatic art. Finally, mention should be made of Fernando Arrabal, whose debut in Spain in 1958 was discouragingly received by the Spanish public and whose temporary emigration to France constituted, for a while, the loss of a renovating force in Spanish theater.

After the initial flurry of plays that finally saw production in Spain after the death of Franco, audience interests quickly shifted to new tastes by the early 1980s. The political critique of the fascist regime, which was at the core of most of the previously suppressed and forbidden works, appeared suddenly dated, even though audiences shared its message. There was a general desire to move out of the fascist past, and theatergoers looked for fresh plays that did not dwell on previous problems.

This audience rejection of plays that centered on social criticism and advocated an often radical social agenda went hand in hand with a desire for entertainment and, ironically so, if compared to the tastes of contemporary American audiences, a thirst for experimental theater and absurdist plays. Caught off guard, some of the older playwrights began to revise their dramatic output to reflect these changes. Arrabal’s plays, for example, became less political and more avant-garde in their experimentation. Although his Inquisición (pr. 1980; inquisition) still concerns itself with Spain and its troubled history, it also includes more experimental approaches than those typical of the social realism of his earlier work.

With new political freedom, the old antagonism of the posibilistas like Buero Vallejo, who managed to get produced under Franco, and the imposibilistas like Sastre, whose works rarely saw the light of day, suddenly disappeared. With it, a new heated struggle for fame, recognition, public success, and acceptance broke out among the established dramatists. No longer did the notion of political persecution serve as a moral counterweight to a lack of popular and institutional acclaim. Understandably, most dramatists tried to capture the interests of a somewhat hedonistic audience who hungered for entertaining fare and also desired intellectual experimentation and avant-garde plays rather than a play concerned with traditional social issues.

Buero Vallejo captured the new wave with plays like Lázaro en el laberinto (pr. 1986; Lazarus in the Labyrinth, 1992), which combined his political interests in revisiting the past of Franco’s dictatorship with a highly stylized treatment of the subjective and fragile nature of memory. While the main character tries to remember whether or not he actually saved his student lover, the young woman Amparo, from fascist thugs back in 1964, an invisible telephone rings in his mind (and in the theater), trying to force him to acknowledge the truth that he abandoned his lover to a certain death. At the time of his death in 2000, Buero Vallejo had become a widely studied and acclaimed Spanish dramatist.

Sastre’s more popular plays paid off in terms of public and official acclaim with La taberna fantástica pr. 1985; Lazarus in the Labyrinth, 1992), which concerned itself with Madrid’s rowdy and bawdy underworld. In the early 1990s, it played to sold-out audiences in the capital and became an international hit. He won the Premio Nacional de Teatro, Spain’s foremost theatrical honor, for it, and this play became the basis of his ongoing fame and critical success.

Socialist Theater Sponsorship

The election victory of the Socialist Party in 1982 translated into the foundation of government sponsorship for Spanish theater. Dramatists found themselves competing for government grants, and many felt that a new era of intense personal rivalry had begun. Paloma Pedrero, a former actress turned successful playwright, stunned audiences with her angry play La llamada de Lauren (pr. 1985; the call of Laura), which challenged traditional gender roles in Spanish society. The topic is central to her other masterpieces, such as El color de agosto (pr. 1988; The Color of August, 1994). Yet in 1995, Pedrero caused great controversy when she turned against the system of state sponsorship. She accused fellow playwrights of inane personal infighting and self-censorship to please the government bureaucrats who decide on the disbursement of grants.

In Pedrero’s view, the democratic government had become as much of a censor of the theater as Franco’s government, with money instead of police and prison the enforcement tools of the regime. She felt that competition for limited state sponsorship inhibited creativity and hastened the move toward commercialization of theater.

However, despite state sponsorship, economic problems persisted at Spanish theaters. Audiences were increasingly attracted to lavishly produced foreign plays. Among Spanish playwrights, the desire for artistic and material triumph led to what some critics saw as a pandering to the lowest of audience interests. If social themes were featured in the plays, they were lurid ones of drug abuse and sexual transgressions, including prostitution and sexual exploitation. Spanish theater had become erotically intense, but some of the plays were using these themes gratuitously.

In the overall crisis, there were exceptions. Ana Diosdado is one of the few important playwrights whose drama has maintained an enormous economic success. Her Los ochenta son nuestros (pr. 1988; the eighties are ours) won popular acclaim in Madrid as well as the rest of Spain, and Trescientos veintiuno, trescientos veintidos (pr. 1993; three twenty-one, three twenty-two) was an instant success with fascinated audiences. The latter play is a witty comedy of manners concerning two couples in adjacent hotel rooms, hence the name of the play, which puns on the room numbers. Two newlyweds room next to a strange couple, a politician and his call girl, who is really an investigative journalist. The ensuing comic complications nevertheless cast some light on contemporary Spanish cultural conflicts, thus helping to distinguish Diosdado’s work as uniquely Spanish. Her plays stand out in a sea of commercially successful plays that nevertheless lack any specific connection to Spain.

Twenty-first-century Issues

Curiously, one response to the perceived crisis in Spanish drama has been a turn to experimental theater. This trend enjoys considerable success and is acclaimed by its urbane audience. Sergi Belbel best exemplifies this trend. His first play, Minimmal Show (with Miquel Górriz, pb. 1992; minimal show), set the direction for these minimalist, experimental plays usually staged at small, out of the way, but critically influential art house theaters. Consisting of very little verbal dialogue, with almost no discernible sets or decorations and only occasional stage action, his plays focus on the postmodern topics of failure of communication and the inherent artificiality of all existence. Talem (pr. 1990; Fourplay, 2000) literally circles around a bed, the only prop on an otherwise barren stage. Two couples each try to persuade the other to make use of this bed, and in thirty-eight scenes, all possible permutations among the characters, who use trickery and charade to accomplish this goal, are explored. Talem is representative of the minimalist plays that have sprung up as a relatively inexpensive alternative to the obstacles of getting an original Spanish play staged at the major playhouses. Belbel also wrote the award-winning plays Forasters (2005) and Soy fea A la Toscana (2007), and in 2021, he published his first novel and Saint George's novel prize-winner, Morir-ne disset.

This turn toward the experimental, abstract play for a rarefied yet intellectually influential audience has not been without its critics. Since the 1980s, Spanish plays that are performed have become less politically and socially engaged, and the near worldwide collapse of Marxism has further undermined traditionally left-wing dramatic themes and approaches. Audiences seem to favor lavish foreign productions or plays that emphasize performance and production values over the written text. Ironically, the experimental plays performed at los alternativos, the small art houses, contribute toward the trend of extra-linguistic spectacle and multimedia approaches to the detriment of text-based drama. With little emphasis on meaningful dialogue and an understanding that verbal discourse is inherently artificial, the plays of Belbel and his circle are perceived as yet another threat to the demanding, text-based Spanish play.

An example of this threat is Concha Romero's situation. She has seen the commercial production of only her first play, Un color a ambar (pb. 1983; the color of amber), which features the semi-comical struggle for the remains of Santa Teresa de Jesus in sixteenth-century Spain. A witty and crafty allegory on the multiple demands placed on women in Spanish society, which ends with the literal dismemberment of the corpse of the female saint, the play was widely acclaimed. Yet, Romero’s subsequent plays have not seen any performance apart from small university productions and have failed to find a viable audience. Romero has moved toward writing movies, scripting television series, and teaching.

The movement to outlets beyond the theater has been typical for many contemporary Spanish playwrights. Many intellectually ambitious dramatists of the generation born between 1960 and 1970, like Luisa Camille, Juan Mayorga, Antonio Onetti, Itziar Pascual Sanchez, and Margarita Sanchez Roldan, have also worked in film or television or doubled as critics or lecturers. Yet, many of the plays performed in Spain are deemed undemanding in terms of time and cost spent on their production. They have often lost any Spanish flavor in the obvious attempt to make them more palatable to a lucrative global audience. However, some twenty-first-century Spanish works have seen success, like Juan Mayorga's 2004 play Himmelweg (Way to Heaven), which gained popularity on global stages beginning in 2009 and extending through the 2020s.

Though some Spanish playwrights emerged in the early twenty-first century, contemporary Spanish drama was largely overshadowed by the previous generation of playwrights. Many critics of Spanish theater have longed for a return to the intellectually distinguished, dialogue-based drama that relied less on spectacle, performance, and special multimedia effects. What is desired is the work of serious, professional playwrights who need a venue for their productions and an audience to sustain them. If audiences return to such productions, the longed-for revival of Spanish drama might happen.

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