Spanish Theater Before 1936: Currents, Constraints, and Lorca's Tragedies

Spanish Theater Before 1936: Constraints and Currents

Regarding the theater prior to 1936, we highlight two major handicaps: the commercial requirements and the preferences of viewers. These two aspects conditioned the creation of the authors:

• Ideologically: Authors had to adapt to the bourgeois way of thinking, which supported some criticism but did not seek social or political transformation.
• Aesthetically: It was a basically conservative theater, lacking technical or aesthetic innovations.

In this situation, we find two main currents of theater:

Conservative Theater vs. Innovative Drama

The Conservative Theater followed the tradition of late nineteenth-century theater. Within this current, the following genres highlighted:

• Bourgeois comedy (e.g., Benavente).
• Neo-romantic verse drama.
• Costumbrista comedy-drama.

The Innovative Theater adopted aesthetic innovation and new ideological approaches (e.g., Valle-Inclán and Lorca).

Valle-Inclán's Contribution: The Grotesque Technique

The most significant contribution of Valle-Inclán's theater is the use of the grotesque technique (esperpento), with which he provided a distorted and critical view of reality. Two works stand out: Divinas palabras and Luces de bohemia. In both, he mixed the tragic and the burlesque to provide a critical perspective on sordid characters and Spanish reality.

The Generation of '27 and Theatrical Renewal

The Generation of '27 stands out especially for the operatic and theatrical contributions of Alberti and Lorca. The three key achievements of this generation are:

1. The purification of poetic verse drama.
2. The incorporation of forms of the Vanguardia (Avant-garde).
3. Interest in bringing the theater to the people.

Federico García Lorca: Themes and Style

Lorca's theatrical creation combined writing with the direction of La Barraca (The Cabin), a traveling theater company that represented classics to the people of Spain. The themes of his plays are the same as those of his poems:

• The myth of impossible desire (the conflict between reality and desire).
• Women sentenced to loneliness, frustration, and failure.

Lorca works the tragedy of the person, often a woman, condemned to a sterile life and vital frustration. The three elements that cause the protagonists' tragic frustration are time, death, and society.

Lorca's Stylistic Evolution

Lorca's theater evolved from its modernist beginnings toward a personal aesthetic, and his later works acquired a strong social dimension.

Regarding his style, we should note the frequent use of prose and verse in many of his works. The use of popular songs is also frequent. He demonstrates a perfect balance between popular language and poetic language, thereby giving rise to imaginative metaphors and sensory connotations.

Key Tragedies of Lorca

His first play, Mariana Pineda, is a successful verse drama, influenced by modernist historical drama, in which the protagonist is executed for having embroidered a liberal flag.

The fullness of Lorca's drama is reached with his last four tragedies:

Blood Wedding

Passion transcends moral and social barriers.

Yerma

A drama of a woman doomed to frustration and unhappiness due to her husband's infidelity and unfulfilled motherhood.

Doña Rosita the Spinster

A useless drama about waiting for love.

The House of Bernarda Alba

Death serves as a tragic condemnation for those yearning for freedom.