RECURSOS
DIDÁCTICOS

THEATRE PLAYS

The Prince’s Theatre (Spanish since 1850), restored in 1806 and with a capacity for 1,200 people, and the theater of the Cruz (of Drama since 1849), more popular and with a capacity of close to 1,250 spectators, were the only two consolidated stages that Madrid had until the inauguration of the Circus or Opera Theatre (1834). A ellos se sumaría el del Liceo (1838) and, shortly after, that of Varieties (1843). Todos eran propiedad del Ayuntamiento, que los arrendaba a un empresario, destinando parte de los beneficios a obras de caridad.

The performances lasted between three and eight days on average, with performances that usually lasted about four hours, including dances and farces. The repertoires included translations (almost 60%), remakes, operas, magic comedies, neoclassical comedies, etc., as well as romantic dramas in the proper sense. The actors were usually untrained, the costumes were anachronistic, the texts could be altered. However, the following stood out: Carlos Latorre, Julián Romea and his wife, Matilde Díez, as well as Concepción Rodríguez or the sisters Bárbara y Teodora Lamadrid.

In the business field, the activity of Juan Grimaldi.Arriving with the troops under the command of the duque de Angulema, Grimaldi soon became director of the Prince’s theatre, where he improved the working conditions of the actors and their training, also helping young authors. He also modernised the stage machinery, lighting and scenery with the help of specialists such as Juan Blanchard, Lucas Gandaglia or Ángel Palmerani.

A commission created in 1833, composed of Quintana, Martínez de la Rosa and Lista, He unsuccessfully proposed to abolish ecclesiastical censorship and to organize a privately-funded theatre company. In 1847, a committee was organized to draft a decree that would regulate the rights of authors, actors and entrepreneurs, the reclassification of Madrid’s theatres and the creation of a state-owned and subsidized theatre, the Teatro Español, through the reorganization of the former Teatro del Príncipe. That same year, Hartzenbusch founded the Spanish Society of Dramatic Authors. It was not, however, until February 1849 when the reorganization of the kingdom’s theatres took place, a month before the decree of the Marquis of Santa Cruz was published, which established the creation of a Teatro Español.

LATE CLASSICISM (EL TARDOCLASICISMO)

Neoclassical comedy

The impact generated in 1806 following the representation of El sí de las niñas, the classic of Leandro Fernández de Moratín (1760-1828), took a long time to fade away. Throughout the first half of the century, a huge number of works and authors followed in its successful wake and model, based on, on the one hand, respect for the classical rules of decorum, verisimilitude and moderation and, on the other, on its declared pedagogical attitude, motivated by the defence of virtue and the censure of vice, especially in matters related to youth, their education and their freedom. Many of the authors who later brought classics of romantic drama to the stage began in this same line.

Francisco Martínez de la Rosa (1787-1862), a precocious jurist at the University of Granada (at the age of 18 he was already a professor of Civil Law), was elected deputy for Granada in 1813. His skillful satire of political careerism, !Lo que puede un empleo! (1812), was followed by La niña en casa y la madre en la máscara (1821)obviously Moratinian in tone and perfectly adapted to the neoclassical canon, in which he returned to the theme of youth education.

Francisco de Paul Martí (1762-1827) is another good representative of the Moratinian imprint, evident in La Constitución vindicada (1813).

Fernando José Cagigal (1765-1824)He was the author of several neoclassical comedies of manners, such as El matrimonio tratado (1817),obvious imitation of El sí de las niñas. Others, such as La sociedad sin máscara (1818), La educación (1818) or Los perezosos (1819), They are nothing more than well-intentioned attempts at enlightened reform through the theatre, although without excessive literary quality.

Manuel Eduardo de Gorostiza (1789-1851), an author halfway between the style of Moratín and that of Bretón de Herreros, brought to the stage Indulgencia para todos (1818), which was followed by Don Dieguito (1820), a satire on fops, perhaps his best work. More circumstantial and adapted to the political demands of the moment, they are Virtud y patriotismo o el 1º de enero de 1820 (1821) or Una noche de alarma en Madrid (1821).

Javier de Burgos (1778-1849) It also follows the Moratinian schemes in Los tres iguales (1818, but premiered in 1827), inspired by the works of the Spanish Golden Century,
although adapted to neoclassical rules. It had less significance El baile de máscaras (1823).

Antonio Gil y Zárate (1763-1861) is the author of some not overly notable comedies, such as El entrometido o las máscaras (1825), Cuidado con los novios (1826), Un año después de la boda (1826) or El día más feliz de la vida (1832).

Eugenio de Tapia (1776-1860) He is the author of two comedies of Moratinian affiliation, La madrastra (1831) y Amar desconfiando o la soltera suspicaz (1832).

Ventura de la Vega (1807-1865), author of a first Virtud y reconocimiento (1824), is best known for El plan de un drama o la conspiración (1835), written next to Bretón de Herreros, or by 1835 y 1836, or lo que es y lo que será (1835), this one together with Grimaldi y Bretón de Herreros. In any case, perhaps the most outstanding of his production is El hombre de mundo (1845), in which, following Moratinian models and with scrupulous respect for classical rules, he paved the way for high comedy. A declared homage to his teacher Moratín was La crítica de El sí de las niñas (1848).

José de Espronceda (1808-1842) wrote, together with Ros de Olano, the poorly constructed Ni el tío ni el sobrino (1834), also in line with the works of Leandro Fernández de Moratín.

By José García Villalta (1801-1846) is the not very successful comedy Los amoríos de 1790 (1838).

The neoclassical tragedy

Often confused with historical drama, neoclassical tragedy managed to survive until the 1860s. Along with translations of French and Italian tragedies, the production of dramatic works that still adhered to Aristotelian poetics was a constant under the reign of Ferdinand VII and even afterwards, while theorists discussed in various poetics the possibility of admitting or not drama, especially historical drama, as a genre independent of tragedy and comedy, especially with regard to the controversial question of unities.

Ángel de Saavedra, Duque de Rivas (1791-1865) had an evolution that took him from the realm of tragedy to that of drama. His apprenticeship period began with works such as Ataulfo (1814) or Doña Blanca, unfortunately lost. Although Aliatar (1816) already contains romantic elements (passion as a motive, an adverse destiny, irony), his sensitivity continued to move within classical parameters, as occurs with El duque de Aquitania (1817), by Juan Eugenio Hartzenbuch.His evolution towards romanticism is more evident from Malek-Adhel (1818) y Lanuza (1822).

Francisco Martínez de la Rosa (1787-1862) He is the author of an interesting neoclassical tragedy, La viuda de Padilla (1812), in which, however, some notable romantic elements can already be traced, such as the conflict between the sense of honour and the love of freedom that affects the heroine, the adverse destiny or the final suicide. Traits announcing the romantic, especially the bitter search for freedom, can also be observed in Morayma (1818, not premiered); in the very colourful Aben Humeya (1823); and, above all, in Edipo (1832), a work of clear transition to romanticism.

In José de Espronceda‘s production, his tragedy Blanca de Borbón (1831) does not stand out precisely, with romantic elements, but still laxly respectful of the rules of the units.

José Mª Díaz (1800-1888) was the author of the tragedy Elvira de Albornoz (1836), whose romantic ingredients disappeared in the later plays Julio César (1843), Lucio Junio Bruto (1844), Catilina (1856) or Jefté (1845), the latter with a biblical theme.

Antonio Gil y Zárate (1763-1861) wrote one of the best tragedies of the time, Blanca de Borbón (1829/1835), which was more successful than his Don Rodrigo, which was never performed.

Patricio de la Escosura (1807-1878) was the author of La corte del buen retiro (1837) and also of Bárbara Blomberg (1837), a work of transition to romanticism, due to its presentation of conflicts between duty and desire in a historical framework, although this did not lead him to alter the formal prescriptions of the prevailing classicism.

José Zorrilla (1817-1893) also followed classical guidelines in two less striking tragedies, Sancho García (1842) and Sofronia (1866).

Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda (1814-1873) used the formal framework of classical tragedy to insert her personal religious romanticism in works such as Alfonso Munio (1844), but above all in two others with a biblical theme: Saúl (1849) and Baltasar (1858).

Manuel Tamayo y Baus (1829-1898) made a good attempt to modernize and adapt the formula of tragedy to the times in Virginia (1853).

A vain attempt to oppose romantic aesthetics is La Muerte de César (1862), by Ventura de la Vega (1807-1865), traditionally considered the swan song of Spanish classical tragedy.

FULL ROMANTICISM

The romantic drama

Spanish romantic drama is fundamentally nourished by innovations coming from Spanish baroque theatre, directly inspired by the Schlegellian vision of Calderón’s theatre, which had been publicised by the Böhl de Faber, although also by more recent French dramaturgy, despite the deep nationalism – it is worth saying here Gallophobia – distilled in the programmatic assertions made by Agustín Durán in his widely disseminated Speech (1828). La aceptación de la radical historicidad de la obra literaria, su necesaria inserción en la continuidad secular de una tradición nacional, constituía el centro de su novedoso planteamiento. Las obras que alumbraron los años 1834-1837 generaron, más que una fórmula unívoca, una panoplia de recursos testados y aprobados. Entre ellos cabe señalar, en lo formal, la asimetría compositiva, la alternancia de prosa y verso, la búsqueda de la naturalidad expresiva o la fluida disposición de la trama en unidades escénicas. En el plano de los contenidos las claves del drama histórico han de buscarse, por un lado, en la caracterización psicológicamente más densa de los personajes heroicos, a menudo de oscura extracción social, frente a la rigidez social y moral de las figuras de autoridad, pero sobre todo en la tensión entre historia nacional y la actualidad de los conflictos que provocaban los emergentes nuevos valores, por lo general enfrentados a los expresados en el teatro clásico y a la convencional moral establecida. Son representativos de estas preocupaciones temas recurrentes, como los de la autoridad paterna o el contenido del honor, así como el balance en la dicotomía verdad histórica/verdad poética, que abrían vía libre a la introducción copiosa de elementos fantásticos y hasta oníricos procedentes de las exitosas comedias de magia.

It must be taken into account that the effectiveness of romantic drama in its basic objective of moving the public was based on the modes of reception that had been given to neoclassical theatre until then. Romantic dramas functioned, in fact, as inverted neoclassical melodramas. In them, despair, far from being compensated by a happy ending, was the payment for the vain illusion of an announced happiness, both in the personal field, in love; and in the political field, in the liberation of peoples. In romantic drama, the impact was based on denying the hero that which, however, the public, induced by the author, believed that he deserved. The tension was thus maintained by this game of constantly deferred and systematically unfulfilled promises, which reduced any search to desolation. The hero remains a hero, but the emotional and moral sequence he goes through is completely subverted with respect to the classic melodrama, as it ends with an ending that is all the more tragic because of the absurd injustice it implies. Irony then appears as the only residue left by Providence in its absence.

The characteristics of Spanish romantic drama are best condensed in historical drama, dominated by the reformulation of a past, not as it was supposed to have been in itself, but as a deliberate interpretation driven by the concerns of the present. On certain occasions this evocation of the past constituted a mere erudite exercise in style intended to serve as a framework for the central theme of the work. This occurred especially from the middle of the century, when historical drama, stripped of its initial commitments, became increasingly politically innocuous for hegemonic modernism, declining into a succession of erudite practices, despite the later attempts to revive the genre by Tamayo y Baus or López de Ayala.

Francisco Martínez de la Rosa (1787-1862), an author of neoclassical training, a good connoisseur of Spanish Golden Century theatre, premiered on April 23, 1834 La conjuración de Venecia, written a few years earlier (1830) and traditionally considered the first fully romantic drama in Spanish dramaturgy, had a lot to do with its grandiloquent settings and its melodramatic elements, derived from Gothic literature; but above all with that synthesis of elements that would be typical of romantic drama: the historical setting, the story of a failed love faced with political oppression and that pessimistic and ironic ending, which questions the very existence of a Providence that orders existence, to present a world abandoned by God, where the prayers of the protagonist, Laura, are ignored and Rugiero, the protagonist, is condemned to death by a cruel father. For this reason, the work is presented, in the opinion of many critics, as a great metaphor of the human condition, dominated by the failed search for freedom as the main theme of a work starring a prefiguration of the romantic hero, raised as a noble savage by pirates, that is to say outside of social conventions, by an innocent.

El Macías (1834) by Mariano José de Larra, critic and translator of some French dramas, is a work with a formal structure that is not very innovative, respectful of the classical units and based on the same traditional legend about a troubadour already dramatized by Lope de Vega in Porfiar hasta morir, which brought it closer to traditional recasts. La conjuración de Venecia, Macías shows, once again, how the struggle of love against an adverse destiny is irremediably doomed to failure and, after that, to death. The work, in this sense, is also a metaphor for the human condition. In the work, Macías, the young and passionate protagonist, rebels in vain against the established authority, leaving himself at the mercy of a metaphysical injustice, which transcends all limits of mere social injustice and turns the hero into a victim of the cosmos. In this sense, the romantic hero can never fight, he can only suffer and, in the end, when the pain is unbearable, die, a fate preferable to fate itself. The only alternative is love. Love and not freedom appears in Macías, beyond the purely conventional bond of marriage, as the only existential support.

Premiered in 1835 and written during the last stage of his French exile under the inspiration of Les Âmes du Purgatorio, which its author, Merimée, places in Spain Don Álvaro o la fuerza del sino, by Ángel de Saavedra, Duque de Rivas It is a work that integrates formal elements that are definitely romantic, from that scenographic effect that brought it closer to “spectacle” works to the mixture of verse and prose outside the classical canons of propriety and appropriateness. Its central theme is also genuinely romantic: fatality, destiny, the chaos of a life without meaning, without any providential order that can be controlled, not governed by any intelligible design and in the face of which, therefore, it is useless to resort, as a poor lifeline, to religion. Here too, the struggle for a position, for justice and, above all, for love, for freedom in short, ends up mired in a complete cosmic absurdity where chance dominates causality. In these conditions, the only logical way out is suicide.

By Joaquín Francisco Pacheco (1808-1865), Alfredo, premiered in March 1835, uses a combination of melodramatic elements, such as implicit incest, with the historical setting of medieval Sicily, the Crusades in the background and an innocent troubadour as the protagonist, Alfredo, in love with Berta, his supposed mother. Inexorable fate and the barriers imposed by social conventions once again push the hero to suicide here.

El trovador by Antonio García Gutiérrez (1812-1884), successfully premiered in March 1836, uses formal innovations such as alternating verse and prose. The work is the story of revenge, with an angelic heroine and a hero of uncertain social status, faced, on the one hand, with social conventions, in this case aristocratic hostility, and, on the other, with the passage of time, which systematically acts against the lovers. The central scene, when Leonor, about to pronounce her vows, is abducted by Manrique, is a declaration of rebellion in which the only thing truly sacred is love. Everything is resolved, as is usual in a revelation scene, with the discovery of the kinship of the antagonists, which precedes a necessarily tragic ending, in which the hero renounces eternal salvation.

El paje, also from Antonio García Gutiérrez It was performed in May 1837. It depicts misunderstandings about family relationships, the taboo of incest and the predicted frustration of impossible loves, which can only be resolved by death. El rey monje, by the same author, premiered in December 1837, contains all the elements typical of the romantic mix of Gothic language, historical drama, inspired in this case by the life of Ramiro II of Aragon, and even the drama of the Spanish Golden Century.

Los Amantes de Teruel, the classic of Juan Eugenio Hartzenbuch (1806-1880), premiered on January 19, 1837. The first version, begun in 1834, had to be extensively edited due to its excessive similarity to Larra’s Macías, despite having other historical and literary references. Nevertheless, it is possibly the most lyrical and ironic of all Spanish romantic dramas, since, on the one hand, in its plot it is precisely love that makes another love impossible and, on the other, the protagonists, Marcilla and Isabel, die of love without external intervention, without murder, or suicide; they simply die because without love, there is no possible life or, better, because in this cruel world love is impossible.

Carlos II el Hechizado by Antonio Gil y Zárate (1796-1861) had her first performance in November 1837. The unbridled passion that Don Froilán, the confessor of the anguished King Charles II, feels for Inés triggers an internal conflict, which is at the same time the origin of his evil and his truculent behaviour. The courtly environment in which the action takes place, dominated by conspiracies and vested interests, is in all probability an allegory of the situation of the contemporary Spanish monarchy to the author.

On November 30, 1837, it was brought to the stage Don Fernando el Emplazado, by Bretón de Herreros, set in Jaén at the beginning of the 14th century. The usual social conflict is unleashed by Benavides’ refusal to grant the hand of his sister Sancha to Pedro Carvajal. With the clash of noble factions as the background of the plot, Carvajal’s personal conflict arises between his love for Sancha and his loyalty to his family, which is an enemy of Benavides’ family.

José Maximiano de Zorrilla
José Maximiano de Zorrilla
José Zorrilla (1817-1893) was responsible for establishing the model of historical drama in its most politically conservative aspect, based on an optimistic vitalism, which fit perfectly, on the one hand, with his triumphant vision of the history of the nation and, on the other, with his versifying skill, linked to the recovery of works from the Spanish Golden Century. Don Juan Tenorio, first performed in 1844, synthesizes all these elements in a hero who manages to achieve happiness through love. His life story, instead of being a frustrated struggle against a fate as fateful as it is cruel, describes the reassuring story of the repentance of a rebel without a cause, who ends up fully reconciled with the world and with God.

More pamphleteering and polemical, Españoles sobre todo, by Eusebio Asquerino (1822-1892), released in May 1844, was a denunciation of the manoeuvres of foreign governments to determine the destiny of the Spanish court and, through it, those of the country, but in this case with the War of Succession in the background. Despite the language full of romantic elements, Españoles sobre todo is no longer a romantic work. Neither is the love affair the focus of the plot, nor is the ending unhappy, since everything concludes with a consensus between rival factions, the return to a social order, which allows the lovers to unite in a happy marriage.

OTHER GENRES

The romantic comedy

Apart from historical drama, one can recognize, following the denomination coined by E. Caldera, romantic comedy. Although far from the importance that drama had, it is worth noting, J. A. Covert-Spring, his work Teresita o una mujer del siglo XIX (1835), based on current issues.

The parody

Parody of dramas was also successful from the 1930s and 1940s, and works such as El trovador, Los Amantes de Teruel or Don Juan Tenorio. However, the works intended to criticize in a more general way the excesses of the romantic pose had more depth. Among them, one of the first was Contigo, pan y cebolla, by Eduardo Manuel de Gorostiza (1789-1851), premiered in July 1833, when the main historical dramas of Spanish Romanticism were still to come. It ridicules the idealism of young romantics blinded by love, which seemed to be enough to face any life project.

Elena, by Manuel Bretón de Herreros (1796-1873), whose first performance took place in October 1834, was also a corrosive use of the same type of elements typical of romantic drama (impossible loves, unleashed passions, suicide), but making them work in the opposite way to that expected in order to highlight their absurdity. El plan de un drama, premiered in October 1835, but especially in Muérete y !verás!, first staged in April 1837, Bretón de Herreros himself dealt with the great romantic themes of love and death in a completely parodic tone, while announcing the first features of high bourgeois comedy.

Sentimental and spectacle theatre

Very popular in the 18th century, the so-called tearful comedy, which evolved from the previous sentimentalism towards a more marked romantic sensualism, did not decline under Ferdinand VII; neither did the comedy of magic, a subgenre in which he stood out in 1825. El genio del Azor, by Rafael de Húmara, but above all, since 1829, La pata de cabra, the very successful adaptation of Le pied du mouton by Martainville y Ribié, thanks to its spectacular staging, its self-deprecating humour and its skilful fusion of genres. This line, aimed at a sociologically diverse and intellectually undemanding public, was followed by established authors such as Manuel Bretón de Herreros in La pluma prodigiosa (1841) or Juan Eugenio Hartzenbuch in La redoma encantada (1839) and in Los polvos de la madre Celestina (1841). Ironía, una moral maniquea y cierto elemento crítico muy atenuado, de corte populista, constituían, junto a la espectacularidad de los montajes, las claves del éxito renovado de este género en las décadas centrales del siglo XIX.

The sentimental drama formula was also very popular, characterized by the schematic characterization of its characters and an overflowing sentimentality. In addition to various translations, some original texts can be highlighted, such as La enterrada viva by Eugenio de Tapia.

The appearance of melodramas on the Spanish stage, influenced by the French, is another sign of the great acceptance of works that combined scenographic effectiveness with plots with a happy ending involving characters of popular extraction who were opposed to social conventions.

Translations

It has been estimated that between 1830 and 1850, 60% of the works performed were translations of foreign authors, especially E. Scribe, V. Ducange or V. Hugo, usually dramas, sentimental tragedies and vaudevilles. Although this practice, together with the no less common reworkings of classical works, tended to slow down the development of original works, the truth is that they allowed novice playwrights to acquire their craft, especially if one takes into account that they were in fact arrangements, sometimes true disfigurements, very adapted to the morality of the moment. Nevertheless, translations made it possible to meet an overwhelming demand, while at the same time opening up the literary spectrum, preparing the public’s sensitivity to face romantic drama.

Recasts of classical theatre

Surviving through reworkings, still very active in the first third of the 19th century in the work of Dionisio Solís and even afterwards, despite the constant decrease in performances, as shown by the cases of Bretón de Herreros or Hartzenbusch, the ancient theatre, the same one that would end up being called Spanish classical, was subject to reworkings committed to correcting the formal “defects” and adapting the message to the morality of the moment. The reworkings made it possible to maintain contact between the public and the theatre of the Spanish Golden Century and to base the romantic attempt to generate a genuinely national dramaturgy.

The minor theatre

These are short one-act pieces, similar to farces or comic plays, performed at the beginning or end of the main piece, usually interspersed, let us not forget, with purely musical compositions and dances, whether traditional boleros, fandangos, minuets, or more novel ones, such as caleseras, mazurkas or others with a regional flavour. From the combination of these elements, booming formulas arose, such as that of Andalusian theatre, with outstanding works from the pen of Rodríguez Rubí.

Public parties

The ceremonial display of power, whether it had to do with religious worship or with events in the life of the royal family, especially frequent in the Ferdinand period, continued the tradition of ephemeral architecture and parades of allegorical floats, although increasingly turned to the propagation of the secular and national values of the emerging bourgeoisie. More popular were bullfights, pantomime, puppets and innovative optical shows, not least connected with the taste for Gothic literature, as was the case with phantasmagoria, the result of the perfection of the magic lantern.

 

LITERATURE

BALLESTEROS DORADO, A. I. (2003) Espacios del drama romántico español, Madrid, CSIC.

CALDERA, E. (2001) El teatro español en la época romántica, Madrid, Castalia.

CORRAL, J. del (2003) Tragedias en el Madrid romántico, Madrid, La Librería.

GARCÍA CASTAÑEDA, S. (1982) “La fortuna del teatro romántico”, en Historia y Crítica de la Literatura Española, t. IV, Madrid, Crítica.

GIES, D. T. (1996) El teatro en la España del siglo XIX, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

GOENAGA, Ángel, MAGUNA, Juan P. (1997) Teatro español del siglo XIX. Análisis de obras, Madrid, Cátedra.

GONZÁLEZ SUBÍAS, J. L. (2005) Catálogo de estudios sobre el teatro romántico español y sus autores. Fuentes bibliográficas, Madrid, Fundación Universitaria Española.

MENARINI, P. (1982) El teatro romántico español (1830-1850). Autores, obras, bibliografía, Bolonia, Atesa.

REES, MARGARET A. (2001) The Nineteent-Century Theatre in Spain: A Bibliography of Criticism and Documentation, Publications of the Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, LXXVIII, Suppplement, Glasgow, The University of Glasgow/Abingdon, Carfax, Taylor & Francis Ltd.

RIBAO PEREIRA, M. (1999) Textos y representación del drama histórico en el Romanticismo español, Pamplona, EUNSA.

RUBIO JIMÉNEZ, J. (1982) Ideología y teatro en España: 1890-1900, Zaragoza, Universidad de Zaragoza-Pórtico.

RUBIO JIMÉNEZ, J. (1983) El teatro en el siglo XIX, Madrid, Playor.

RUIZ RAMÓN, F. (1986) Historia del teatro español, Madrid, Cátedra.

THATCHER GIES, D. (1996) El teatro en la España del siglo XIX, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

VV.AA (1984) Teatro romantico spagnolo, Quaderni Della Facultá di Lettere e Filosofia Della Universitá di Bolonia, 4, Bolonia.

ZAVALA, I. M. (1982) “La fortuna del teatro romántico”, en Historia y crítica de la literatura española, t. 5, Barcelona, Crítica, pp. 183-199.