Spanish Romantic Drama: Characteristics and Key Playwrights

Spanish Romantic Theater: Characteristics and Key Playwrights

1. Introduction to Spanish Romantic Drama

When romantic dramas began to invade the stages of Madrid, Spanish theater was in serious decline. Bland, imitative moralizing comedies and cold Moratinian classical tragedies constituted the original production. Beyond these, one could only find translations of foreign works or performances of opera. Hence, the new dramatic school achieved resounding success with an audience that had never accepted classical drama.

2. Features of Romantic Drama

Thematic Characteristics

• Historical drama dominates.
• Emphasizes emotional impact, utilizing various effects, contrasts, and surprises.
• Characters' passions become strident, often driven by ill-fated circumstances.
• Common themes include:
  • Impossible love
  • Illicit passion
  • Political rebellion
  • Desire for absolute freedom
  • Revenge
  • Challenges
  • Suicides

Characters possess strange and unique features: mysterious beings, marginalized figures, generous and gallant heroes, or amoral and cynical individuals.

Exceptional environments are preferred: castles, monasteries, desolate landscapes, cemeteries, and unavoidably inhospitable settings, often featuring storms or night scenes.

The intention shifts from instructing to moving the viewer.

Formal Characteristics

• Breaks from previous mandatory rules.
• Combines prose with verse.
• Blends tragic and comic elements.
• Disregards the rules of the three unities (time, place, action).
• Works exhibit greater variety and dynamism.
• The division into acts does not follow a uniform approach: some dramas have five acts (e.g., Don Álvaro), while others have three or even seven (e.g., Don Juan Tenorio).
• Sublime and colloquial (or plain) styles coexist.
• Versification is characterized by polymetry.

3. Key Playwrights of Spanish Romanticism

Beginnings (1834)

• Mariano José de Larra: Macías (1834)
• Francisco Martínez de la Rosa:
  • Aben Humeya (1830)
  • The Conspiracy of Venice (1834)

Success (1836)

• The Duke of Rivas:
  • El Moro Expósito (1834)
  • Don Álvaro, or The Force of Destiny (1835)
• Antonio García Gutiérrez:
  • El Trovador (1836)
  • Venganza Catalana (1864)
  • Juan Lorenzo (1865)
• Juan Eugenio Hartzenbusch:
  • Los Amantes de Teruel

Later Period: Moderation and Legacy

• José Zorrilla:
  • El Zapatero y el Rey (1840)
  • Don Juan Tenorio (1844)
  • Traidor, inconfeso y mártir (1849)