The Social Dimensions of Galdos' Theater

Abstract

G ALDOS' FAME as a novelist has obscured his great contribution to the Spanish stage. An appraisal of his works based on his novels is both unfortunate and inaccurate. Throughout the entire corpus of his work, Gald6s traced the changing economic and political situation in Spain. He put history at the center of his humanism and directed attention to the social relationships that resulted from the interplay of history, economics and politics in contemporary Spain. Nowhere is this more apparent than in his plays. Gald6s dramatized such contemporary social predicaments as intolerance, backwardness, reactionary resistance to change, hypocrisy, and intransigence. His plays were often political statements with national implications because he sought to expose the false myths that underlay the entire Spanish social structure. Realidad, Gald6s' first professional produced play, provides a striking example of the author's attempt to introduce a modem consciousness-a new social dimension-to the Spanish stage. He completely reversed the traditional concept of honor when Orozco, the betrayed husband, forgave his wife's lover, Federico Viera. It is difficult to overestimate the effect of Realidad on the Spanish audiences accustomed to plays that still stressed the importance of revenge and the dictates of an absolute code of honor.