The Theater
The Spanish Realist theater contains a wide spectrum of works, from the most conservative and non-critical positions to the most progressive and acid ones: from the high comedy of Adelardo López de Ayala and Ventura de la Vega, to the ethically overwrought theater of Benito Pérez Galdós and the sharp critique of Enrique Gaspar. Apart from these authors, the interest in costumbrismo reflected the most conservative mores of the bourgeois public. Costumbrismo had a new beginning, through genres like the zarzuela or género chico, the sainete or "theater by the hour". It was fundamentally a theater of middle class evasion of social problems, avoidng the creation of crises of conscience for the bourgeoisie. Alongside this, it tried to revitalize the old fashioned conservative value of honor through initiatives to revive romantic historical drama. These are exemplified by the works of Manuel Tamayo y Baus and by the Neo-Romanticism of the mathematician José Echegaray.
Read more about this topic: Spanish Realist Literature
Famous quotes containing the word theater:
“We all know that the theater and every play that comes to Broadway have within themselves, like the human being, the seed of self-destruction and the certainty of death. The thing is to see how long the theater, the play, and the human being can last in spite of themselves.”
—James Thurber (1894–1961)
“Will TV kill the theater? If the programs I have seen, save for “Kukla, Fran and Ollie,” the ball games and the fights, are any criterion, the theater need not wake up in a cold sweat.”
—Tallulah Bankhead (1903–1968)