Spanish Theater: Early 20th Century to 1939
Introduction
The Spanish theater of the first half of the twentieth century, apart from the work of Valle-Inclán and Lorca, has been viewed by critics unfavorably. Overall, despite the glut of nominal authors and trends, there was a belief that the Spanish scene was going through a period of decline. The Spanish dramatists of the time seemed unaware of developments elsewhere in Europe.
The theater is a literary genre that is a bit special, as it needs to be represented by actors and an audience to be complete. This explains why we find strong commercial influences. These influences explain well that in the period before the Civil War, drama had two very distinct trends:
A. A commercial theater, facing a bourgeois audience, that barely provided any critical and technical innovations. This tendency had triumphed in the theaters of the time.
B. An innovative theater, which aimed to provide a new type of work, either for its critical load, for its technical innovations, or both. This trend, however, was largely a commercial failure.
Commercial Theater in the Early 20th Century
The High Comedy or Benaventina
The first productions of Benavente (1866-1954) are close, for their critical tone, to the modernist spirit, from which he would later differ markedly. His was an evolution from the incisive and critical to conservatism, in order to please the public. Aesthetically, it was anchored in realism, far from the avant-garde, and ideologically, it offered a superficial critique of hypocrisy and bourgeois conventions, but not beyond what was acceptable and fashionable.
The stories have a good dramatic construction and careful language of great spontaneity, incorporating resources characteristic of conversational speech.
Among his vast stage output (172 works), three works are included:
- The Vested Interests (1907)
- Lady Loves (1908)
- The Unloved (1913)
Vested Interests, his masterpiece, is inspired by Italian commedia dell’arte. Its farcical tone contrasts the world of interest and the world of love, but from a cynical and pragmatic skepticism.
Followers of Benaventina comedy include Linares Rivas and, above all, Gregorio Martínez Sierra, whose highlights are two works: Lullaby and Don Juan of Spain.
The Poetic Drama
At first, within the modernist spirit of breaking generic boundaries, there was an attempt to approach the drama of lyric poetry, resulting in a lyrical drama. Over time, it became socially integrated as a fashion.
A historic theater in verse then triumphed in true traditionalist mode. The authors (Marquina, Villaespesa, Doña María de Padilla (1913), the Machados, Don Juan de Mañara (1927)) claimed a return to the Spanish theatrical tradition, romantic comedies and baroque dramas, and were supported by the relevant authorities. They recreated matters of national history and used a verse that was sonorous, effective, and rhetorical. The author who stands out in this current is Eduardo Marquina (1897-1946): The Daughters of the Cid, 1906, Doña María la Brava, 1910, El Gran Capitán, 1916.
The Humorous Drama
The theater of the century’s comedy deals with superficial plot issues easily resolved favorably. It features popular and authentic characters that
amuse through their language.
The farce of Madrid’s Carlos Arniches is the last stage of derivation interludes. It is set up as a short piece that exalts values and provincial local types (the Madrid type), also with a tone of mockery and harsh criticism. He created a false popular language with comic effects (syntactic deformations, the invention of linguistic turns mixed with other actually popular ones). By 1910, vaudeville languished, so it imposed a change in direction: the grotesque tragedy. It is a mixture of tragedy and comedy, being exceeded by the melodramatic caricature, as in Miss Trevélez (1916).
In this stream of easy humor lies the archetypal Andalusianism of the Alvarez Quintero brothers (Serafin and Joaquin), who reflect the wit, gaiety, and affability of Andalusia. They wrote over 200 works. Some titles are The Darling and The Patio.
Between 1915 and 1935, a new genre of humor emerged: Astrakhan. Typically, it is the radicalization of Astrakhan and the conversion of all elements into comic form. The aim was to make people laugh with puns, jokes, wordplay, improbable situations, character names, titles of works, etc. Its most representative figure is Pedro Muñoz Seca, with 100 works. His biggest successes are Don Mendo’s Revenge (1918), The Executioner of Seville (1916), and Touching Extremadura (1926).
Scenic Renewal of the First Third of the 20th Century
Apart from commercial claims, these authors claimed to use theater as a conduit for the expression of their religious, existential, and social conflicts (in this last aspect, Valle-Inclán stands out). They created an intellectual, complex theater that connected with the major theatrical and philosophical trends of the time in the West. Technically, they tried to break with realistic forms of representation, an aspect that stands out, above all, in Ramón del Valle-Inclán.
Generation of ’98 and Others
Basically, the attempts at renovation came from authors who cultivated other genres and found in theater a field of experimentation.
Azorín’s theater was very badly received by the public. Azorín’s works can be grouped into a symbolic drama in the manner of Maeterlinck. His trilogy The Invisible stands out.
Unamuno wrote a very intellectualized drama, with almost nonexistent action, allowing him to develop a single theme: existential concerns, the internal conflict between feeling and reason. Ahead of its time, it reduced the show to its pure essence, ideas, and intellectual conflicts, with an economy of language, reduced to the minimum characters, and schematic action. He wrote nine plays and two minor pieces, most notably The Other (1926), a conflict between two twins.
Jacinto Grau reworked legendary and symbolic issues from intellectual perspectives. He obtained greater success abroad (France and Czechoslovakia) than in Spain. His best-known work is The Lord of Pygmalion (1921), in which four planes are noted.
Ramón Gómez de la Serna published 17 plays between 1909 and 1912. The following appeared in 1929: the drama Media People, and the last in 1935, Stairs. His most notable contribution is the experimental Media People, in which the characters appear half in black.
There is no doubt that Ramón María del Valle-Inclán is considered the great dramatist of contemporary theater for his creative personality and originality in the use of language. We can classify his work into three stages:
Modernist Stage. From his earliest stories, published in journals, there is a modernist influence. The Wilderness of Souls (1908) is one of his most representative works of this phase.
Intermediate stage: The mythical cycle. He wrote, between narration and drama, the trilogy Comedy Barbarian (Eagle Coat of Arms (1907), Romance de Lobos (1908), and later Silver Face (1932)). It continues the rural ambiance and aesthetic,
although with significant modernist innovations: a bitter, rough, torn tone. They thrive in a rural Galicia with strange characters, morons, and violent individuals, most notably Juan Manuel Montenegro, a tyrannical hidalgo with Satanic elements, and Don Juan in a decadent environment. The first important development is the stage directions, of exceptional quality and nudity.
Maturity. 1920 is a crucial date. Four plays are published: Italian Farce of Love with the King, Farce and Queen Castiza License (on Elizabeth II), Divinas Palabras, and Luces de Bohemia. The first two mark the appearance of the grotesque, a degraded and vicious distortion of a historical present, and the last is what Valle himself calls”esperpento”
The Esperpento is an aesthetic distortion: it consists of applying to characters and situations a degraded optic, as in Bohemian Lights, reflected in the concave mirrors of an establishment in Alley Cat, in stage XII. The tragic and the burlesque are interspersed, and its genesis lies in the need to create the perfect aesthetic expression to transpose the grotesque contradiction with which the author sees the reality of Spain. The tragic sense of Spanish life can only be rendered with a systematically distorted aesthetic.
After Luces de Bohemia, he wrote other esperpentos under the title of Mardi Gras: Don Friolera’s Horns, The Riches and Wealth of the Deceased, and The Captain’s Daughter.
Finally, Valle-Inclán’s theater closes with a series of short pieces collected in Altarpiece of Greed, Lust, and Death (1927). These pieces are close to the absurdity of the situations and characters, degraded, and themes: necrophilia, witchcraft, sacrilege, etc.
Valle-Inclán stands out not only for his mastery of Spanish but also as a theatrical innovator who anticipated film techniques (jumps in time, multiple scenarios, etc.). He brought Spanish theater closer to the theater of the rest of Europe.
The Theater of the Generation of ’27
The Generation of ’27 contributed effectively to the renewal stage. Its components included in their works of avant-garde developments and reinforced the social intention. In addition, the theater came to town by representing the best works of Spanish classics through drama groups (La Barraca de García Lorca).
MAX AUB (1903-1972), but is better known as novelist and playwright, he cultivated an interesting drama. In the first day wrote Narciso, based on the Greek myth clearly avant-garde perspective. In its second stage, the theater after the Civil War in exile, the issue is the collective tragedy (suffering wars, Spanish and European.) San Juan, die by closing the eyes are his most representative works.
RAFAEL ALBERTI opens with controversy, in 1931 two works: The man uninhabited. (Auto without sacrament) and Fermín Galán (Romance of the cecum in three acts) on the execution of a Republican military. In the second stage, and in exile, writes The scarecrows (1944) and Night of War in the Prado Museum (1956, Etching in a prologue and one act), the best political theater of the author.
ALEJANDRO CASONA won the Lope de Vega in 1933 by La Sirena Varada. The dramatic technique of this piece is common to all his work excited to escape mundane reality and hard, raising moral and humane, extolled the beauty and goodness. It creates a kind of poetic and symbolic drama that mixes reality and fantasy. After the exile, returned to Spain in 1962 and premiered almost all his work. In 1965, the year of his death, he premiered his latest work: The Knight of the golden spurs, which exalts the figure of Quevedo. He also wrote Our Natacha (1936), a great success, Unfinished Symphony (1939), The perfect married (1941) and The Lady of the Dawn (1944), his masterpiece.
FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA, together with Valle-Inclan, the chief exponent of the renewal of the Spanish drama of the first half of the century.
His first plays are related to the modern theater. The curse of the butterfly, beautiful poem without theatrical structure. Mariana Pineda (1925), her first success, linked to the historical drama in verse of the day. The theme is the tragic consequences of love and freedom in an oppressive society.
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At a later stage farces written for puppet (Tragicomedy of Don Cristobal and Rosita Sena and the Puppet of Don Cristobal) and farces for people (The Shoemaker’s Prodigious Wife The Love of Don Perlimplín and Belisa in the garden).
Theatre surreal. After his trip to New York, writes The public and So spend five years, close to Poeta en Nueva York. These are complex works, tight, difficult and arbitrary symbols. His themes are the flight of time or the man’s inner struggle.
Central Works. From 1930 to 1936, the theater is its priority activity. The themes are the struggle between reality and desire – usually embodied in women, carriers of the passions and symbols of fertility – evolve from the metaphysical to the social . In some, death or time, in others the social, moral intransigence, prejudice and class pride lead to tragedy.
To this period belong Doña Rosita the Spinster and the Language of Flowers (1935) and the dramatic trilogy of Spanish soil, composed of three tragedies: Blood Wedding (1933), Yerma (1934) and The House of Bernarda Alba (1936 .)
Blood Wedding is written in prose and verse. The action takes place in a double level: the social and the quake. In social terms, are violence, procreation and the worship of the earth lead to death in the quake, the allegory of Death and the Moon, leading to the slaughter. Yerma is the drama of sterility, the Maternity frustrated.
La casa de Bernarda Alba, Blood Wedding inspired as a real event, is his masterpiece. The closure imposed, mourning, a ban on going outside the force feeding of fate and tragic eroticism. In the eternal struggle of liberty against tyranny, the natural instinct against reason arbitrarily imposed death.
Finally, the theater is an extraordinary renewal Lorca because it includes elements of poetry and symbolic, and raises some issues typical of the society of his time, apparently local, the category of universal human conflicts.