Spanish Drama Before 1939: Key Playwrights and Movements

Spanish Drama Before 1939

Spanish drama up to 1939 saw very strong trading conditions with a local predominance of private, public taste that came to their rooms (the bourgeoisie). There were few possibilities to reach the capacity for self-criticism of the Spanish theater audience. The first third of the century is divided into two fronts: the triumphant-follower stage, which triumphed in the late nineteenth century.

Key Movements and Playwrights

A] Bourgeois Comedy with Benavente

B] Verse Drama, with Contributions of Modernism

C] Comic Theater, with a Predominant Traditional Style

Jacinto Benavente (1866-1954)

Jacinto Benavente is the most representative figure of the possibilities and limitations of the bold moment. He had a beginning with "The Alien Nest", pressing on the situation of married women in bourgeois society, and theatrical language renewal. Benavente was faced with the dilemma of maintaining the critical load and being rejected. His works would remain in the line of Mennecke comedy and rural drama. His salon was also more successful in "Malquerida".

Verse Drama

The most parallel case is that of a neo-Romantic theater of nationalist exaltation, romanticizing the past, with some brilliant verse dramas:

• Francisco Villaespesa formed the unlikely exotic atmosphere of a romantic and legendary Spain.
• The modernist rhetoric of the historical legendary Eduardo Marquina evoked nostalgia and melancholy pages of national history.
• The works written in collaboration by Manuel and Antonio Machado alternated with such classics.

Comic Theater of Manners

The comic character derives from the genre called "kid", a musical comedy where thoroughbred types and environments are a pretext for fun. Popular Andalusian types and picturesque surroundings are the ingredients of the Seville Theater of Serafin. Carlos Arniches, from Alicante, moved to Madrid when he was very young; his illusions were to live in a communal courtyard, the taverns. With Pedro Muñoz Seca, comical drama followed the slapstick, provided using absurd situations that arise with a casual mood.

Ramon del Valle-Inclan

Ramon del Valle-Inclan is the maximum representative in this new theatrical reality, a writer rigorously given to literary creation, with a radical mind, an image that leads to egocentrically disguising his physical appearance. His first stage as a playwright would go from modernism to farce, with aesthetically idealized modernist environments. The rural Galicia dramas are a reflection of a superstitious and cruel society, torn by dark passions. Since 1920, now you see the most original of his plays: the grotesque deformation of reality, the characters are dehumanized and became simple caricatures. Under this name are: "The Horns of Don Friolera", "The Trappings of the Deceased", and "The Captain's Daughter".

Theater in the Generation of '27

This period saw a cleansing of poetic drama, the incorporation of art forms, and the purpose of bringing theater to the people.

• Pedro Salinas - "Judith and the Tyrant"
• Rafael Alberti - Before the war, he opened with the surrealist "The Uninhabited Man".
• Miguel Hernandez - Cultivated a social drama with echoes of Lope, "The Tiller of More Air".
• Alejandro Casona - Revealed himself with the Lope de Vega prize with "The Grounded Siren", and his great success "Our Lady Natasha".