Spanish Theater: Benavente, Unamuno, Azorín, Grau, Valle-Inclán

Early 20th Century Spanish Theater Triumphs

98.el commercial theater triumphs in earlier decades. It still makes the works of Charles Arniches and Hnos. Álvarez Quintero, Madrid society idealized and Andalusian, proto defects reflect the strengths and typical of both regions.

Jacinto Benavente (Nobel Prize 1922)

His first stage involved the renovation break with the modernist tradition melodramatic, but soon gives way to success and high comedy. He manages to overcome the declamatory, grandiloquent tone with elegant language. In his work, vested interests introduce characters from Italian comedy and show a society based on a set of interests.

Miguel de Unamuno

His plays deal with symbolic existential conflict and lack of ornamentation and theatrical stage directions in order to deepen the characterization of the figures. Fedra and El Otro.

José Martínez Ruiz "Azorín"

He creates some plays, the best being the trilogy The Invisible and Angelita.

Jacinto Grau

He wants to renovate the theater of his time drawing on various topics, approaches, and techniques. Examples include Lord of Pygmalion and later still, expressionist and symbolic techniques in works like El Caballero Varona.

Ramón María del Valle-Inclán

A brilliant innovator of Spanish theater, he rejects bourgeois realism and proposes a complete renovation of the Spanish scene in all its aspects, experimenting with several methods. His theater is divided into three periods:

1. Mythic Cycle

Two exhibitions. The Comedias Bárbaras are located in Galicia, his homeland, timeless, superstitious, lacking moral characters, sacrilege, and are ferociously tragicomic. Divinas Palabras is a rural play in which the protagonist, a two-headed dwarf, is taught by fairs and money. New passions are mixed in a cruel world of roads and misery.

2. Farce Cycle

A group of comedies gathered in a volume called Plank's Puppet Education of Princes. These works present a continuous contrast between the sentimental and the grotesque. His characters, puppet shows, announce the arrival of the esperpento.

3. Esperpento Cycle

The grotesque, rather than a literary genre, is a new way of seeing the world as it deforms and distorts reality to present the real picture hidden behind it. For this, he uses parody, humanizes animals and objects, or objectifies and animalizes humans. Presented thus, the characters lack humanity and are presented as puppets.