Spanish Theater Before 1936: Trends and Playwrights
Public taste often determined the direction of theater before 1936. Two major trends are frequently discussed: commercial theater and renewal. The former aimed to meet the demands of a typical theater audience, with comic or melodramatic traditional dramatic forms. The latter offered refreshing forms and themes, but it took many years to be fully appreciated.
Commercial Theater: Three Main Streams
Commercial theater developed in three distinct streams:
- Bourgeois Comedy/High Comedy (Benaventina): Named after its most prominent author, Jacinto Benavente, this style catered to the bourgeoisie. The characters were upper-class, and conflicts revolved around issues like infidelity and heartbreak, presented with friendly, ironic, and superficial criticism. A highlight is *Vested Interests*, where two crooks exploit the accumulation of interest that marks a community’s life.
- Poetic Drama: Gaining wide acceptance in the early years of the century, poetic drama was written in verse. It focused on great historical events or characters, extolling the past. This theater was a reaction against the critical view of Spanish history of the Generation of ’98. Its most important authors were Eduardo Marquina and Francisco Villaespesa, both with conservative ideas, who looked with nostalgia at the imperial past in works featuring El Cid, the Catholic Monarchs, and the last Tercios of Flanders.
- Comic Theater: The preferred modality for the popular classes, with Carlos Arniches as its most representative author. This theater revived the tradition of short Golden Age pieces and *sainetes* (short, comedic pieces) to present a gallery of colorful, everyday Madrid characters and their speech. Arniches later cultivated the “grotesque tragedy,” proposing to crudely expose certain humorous aspects of Spanish society, similar to themes treated by the Generation of ’98, such as provincial close-mindedness, despotism, and social injustice.
The Theater of Renewal
On the other hand, the theater of renewal saw numerous attempts at dramatic experimentation. While many failed to attract the public, two achieved wide recognition: the absurdism of Valle-Inclán and the tragedy of Lorca.
Within the Generation of ’98, Unamuno presented his spiritual and philosophical concerns about the meaning of life in works of extreme narrative and spectacular nudity. The Generation of ’27 also attempted to renew the theater with political works, short pieces, and *sainetes*.
Valle-Inclán as a Playwright
Valle-Inclán is unanimously considered the most important playwright of the 20th century and one of the great innovators of contemporary theater, due to his creation of the *esperpento*. He began with a series of Modernist dramatic poems, and his first major work was the *Barbaric Comedies*, staging the brutal activities of the *hidalgo* Don Juan de Montenegro and his violent children in the context of primitive rural Galicia.
He continued with a cycle of farces, ridiculing the behaviors of the nobility. This grotesque style was a precursor to his first *esperpento*, produced in 1920: *Bohemian Lights*. Works grouped under this name include *Shrove Tuesday*, *Bohemian Lights*, *The Iberian Ring*, and *Tyrant Banderas*.
Valle-Inclán’s *esperpento* emphasizes parody of previous literary models, such as honor dramas or the myth of Don Juan. It features abundant criticism of social classes and institutions, and a clear preference for marginal or degraded environments. His style demonstrates expressive power with a wide variety of linguistic registers, including ironic and derogatory derivations. Characters appear animalized or turned into puppets.
His *esperpentos* are abstract works with many characters and scenarios, unrepresentable dramatic dimensions, and narrative and descriptive language of extraordinary beauty.