20th Century Spanish Theater: From Benavente to Lorca
Early 20th Century Theater
Bourgeois Comedy
This style, led by Jacinto Benavente, catered to the upper class with plays focused on their conflicts. Benavente’s skillful language, wit, and irony never challenged the social order. Notable works include those exploring vested interests in rural settings, such as La Malquerida.
Historical and Poetic Modernist Theater
This movement reacted against the critical view of Spanish history prevalent in the late 19th century. Authors like Eduardo Marquina recalled the imperial past with nostalgia in works like El Cid. This style featured varied verse, musicality, and lyrical language.
Popular Theater
Popular classes favored variety shows like zarzuela and sainetes. Authors like Carlos Arniches revived the Golden Age tradition of short pieces, presenting colorful characters from Madrid and their daily lives. Serafín and Joaquín Álvarez Quintero depicted a romanticized Andalusia.
Grotesque Tragedy
This genre, exemplified by the work of Jacinto Benavente, removed humor to expose the harsh realities of Spanish society. It tackled themes similar to those explored by the Generation of ’98, such as the play Miss Trevélez.
Innovative Theater
The Generation of ’98
Authors like Miguel de Unamuno, Azorín, Ramón María del Valle-Inclán, and Jacinto Grau aimed to create theater that explored religious, existential, and social issues. Their complex works linked intellectual and philosophical trends with innovative theatrical techniques, breaking away from realist forms. Unamuno’s plays were stark and philosophical, while Azorín’s used unreal and symbolic resources with literary dialogue.
Ramón Gómez de la Serna experimented with plays featuring fragmented characters searching for identity.
The Generation of ’27
This generation, including Federico García Lorca, Rafael Alberti, Pedro Salinas, Max Aub, and Miguel Hernández, had three main goals:
- Incorporate avant-garde elements to break with realism.
- Bring theater to a wider audience beyond the upper class.
- Integrate poetry into theater, not just through verse but also through the poetic weight of the content.
Besides Lorca, other notable authors include Alberti with his political theater, Salinas with his farcical short plays, Aub who blended historical commitment with human exploration, and Hernández with his autosacramentales and social theater.
Valle-Inclán
Considered the greatest figure of 20th-century Spanish theater, Valle-Inclán’s innovative work was initially misunderstood. His plays anticipated new trends in world theater. His dramatic development can be divided into cycles:
- Modernist Cycle: Featuring works like El Marqués de Bradomín.
- Mythical Cycle: Set in his native Galicia, with characters driven by primal forces and featuring a blend of the barbaric and the divine.
- Farcical Cycle: Including La Marquesa Rosalinda and Farsa y licencia de la Reina Castiza, which contrast the sentimental and the grotesque.
- Esperpento Cycle: Introduced a new way of seeing the world as grotesquely deformed, using parody, degradation of characters, and the humanization of objects to reveal the underlying reality. Key works include Luces de Bohemia and Martes de Carnaval.
- Final Cycle: Showed a strong dramatic evolution, with the presence of rational and instinctive elements alongside dehumanized characters. Notable works include Divinas Palabras and Retablo de la avaricia, la lujuria y la muerte.