Three Top Hats: A Whimsical Love Story
Context and Summary
Miguel Mihura’s Three Top Hats, written in 1932 and published 20 years later, unfolds in a hotel on the eve of a wedding. Dionisio, seemingly an ordinary client, arrives for a night’s rest before his impending nuptials. However, his stay takes an unexpected turn, transforming into a lively celebration. Don Rosario, the welcoming hotel owner, shows Dionisio to his room. Dionisio calls his fiancée to inform her of his whereabouts. Meanwhile, Paula, a dancer from the Buby Barton company, is also staying at the hotel following their Music Hall debut.
Through a series of absurd adventures and nonsensical conversations, Dionisio and Paula fall in love. Their passionate night together is interrupted by the inevitable arrival of morning, and Dionisio must depart. Don Rosario retrieves Dionisio, while Paula hides. The two lovers bid a distant farewell, their future uncertain.
Characters
- Dionisio: A mature man, the protagonist, engaged to Don Sacramento’s daughter. He falls for Paula and briefly becomes a juggler.
- Don Rosario: Dionisio’s friend and confidant, the owner of the hotel. He cares for his guests like his own children.
- Paula: A dancer in Buby Barton’s company. She falls for Dionisio despite their age difference. Paula is immature and childlike, and Buby’s on-again, off-again girlfriend.
- Buby Barton: The director of the dance company. A shrewd character motivated by self-interest, Buby attempts to manipulate Paula.
- Madame Olga, Fanny, Trudy, Sagra, and Carmela: Dancers in the dance company.
Literary Features
Three Top Hats, a comic drama from the mid-20th century, showcases a pervasive sense of humor. This humor evolves, challenging societal norms and prejudices. It suggests the relativity of the world, accepting the possibility of the unlikely. The play doesn’t aim to correct or teach, but rather expresses a bittersweet sense of the world’s absurdity. This absurdity is reflected in the dialogue, particularly in the interactions between Don Rosario and Dionisio, and in Dionisio’s conversations with his fiancée.
Musicality permeates the work, with each character possessing a characteristic song, enhancing the festive atmosphere.
Structure
The play consists of three acts, adhering to the neoclassical unities of time, place, and action. The events unfold within 24 hours, entirely at the hotel, and revolve around the story of Dionisio and Paula.
Linguistic Features
Written entirely in dialogue, the play follows a traditional structure with a beginning, middle, and end, presented in chronological order. The language employs various functions: representational, expressive, phatic, conative, and poetic. Cohesion is achieved through the order of actions and the use of words related to emotions, entertainment, hospitality, and absurdity. The text features a variety of nouns, adjectives, and verbs, primarily in the present tense, with some instances of preterite and imperfect tenses. Declarative, interrogative, exclamatory, hortatory, hesitant, and optative sentences are used. Due to the dialogic nature of the play, subordinate clauses are frequent, alongside juxtaposed and coordinated clauses.
The language is simple, employing common words and derivatives. The style is subjective, incorporating irony and absurdity through nonsensical situations and dialogue.
Review and Critique
Miguel Mihura’s Three Top Hats (1932) explores themes of infidelity, impossible love, the pursuit of goals, and disappointment. The author employs irony to create comical, often bordering on nonsensical, situations. The play emphasizes humor and heightened emotions, reflecting the intensity of the impossible love. While the language is simple, it is also carefully crafted with a rich and varied lexicon.
Personally, I found the play challenging at times, struggling to follow the convoluted dialogue and incoherent statements that seemed disconnected from the central narrative.