Romantic Drama: Don Alvaro, The Troubadour, and Don Juan Tenorio

The Romantic Drama: Don Alvaro, The Troubadour, and Don Juan Tenorio

Key Features of Romantic Drama

Structure and Discourse

• Division of the work into composite days.
• Time in various settings.
• Mixture of verse and prose with a tendency towards polymetry.
• Breaking the rule of three unities, with secondary episodes and genre scenes.
• The conflict occurs in different places and may include jumps of years.
• Mixture of comical and tragic elements, in scenes of dramatic tension and other maxims of intense lyricism.
• High and colloquial styles.

Characters

• The protagonists are often unknown, noble, and generous, and are victims of a blind fate.
• Women love passionately but are condemned to killing and suffering.
• Many secondary characters appear.

Staging

• Staging had great importance, with detailed stage directions.
• The sets were spectacular, using gas light contrasts.
• Sound effects helped the action or exciting moments.

Themes

• The great themes of romantic drama are fate and passionate love, death, revenge, and bloody and extreme power.
• Moving away from authority.
• Established rules on matters such as adultery and suicide.
• Usually appear melodramatic and fantastic elements.

Time, Space, and Structure: Don Juan Tenorio

Don Juan Tenorio consists of two parts with a contrast between them: the first focuses on the characterization of the protagonist, and the second focuses on the cemetery, with the appearance of the Stone Guest, the death, and the salvation of Don Juan.

Characters

• Don Juan is the star, an unscrupulous, individualistic, and cynical man, but later appears as a being capable of change and deleting his previous image.
• Doña Inés is an innocent and sweet young woman symbolizing love that redeems the libertine.

Style and Language

• Written in verse with polymetry.
• Language mixing lyrical elements, a neutral colloquialism, some modern words, and some archaisms.
• The scenery is important in the second part.

Romantic Prose

Diffuse manifestations of romantic prose, especially in "cuadros de costumbres" (pictures of manners) and the novel of manners, the "folletín" (serialized novel). Thanks to the press, these texts were adapted to the form of articles or "cuadros de costumbres," which are descriptive texts that reflect different aspects of society from the era. The authors preferred to describe middle-class types, environments, or part of scenes.

Important Authors

• Ramón de Mesonero Romanos: Used the pseudonym "El Curioso Parlante" in his texts.
• Serafín Estébanez Calderón: Interested in a pure and difficult style with a baroque trend.