Two Documents for the History of the Spanish Theatre in the Period of the Gobierno Intruso

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Notes

1. Emilio Cotarelo y Mori, Isidoro Máiquez y el teatro de su tiempo (Madrid: Imp. de José Perales y Martínez, 1902); Jorge Campos, Teatro y sociedad en España (1780–1820) (Madrid: Editorial Moneda y Crédito, 1969); Emmanuel Larraz, La Guerre d'Indépendance espagnole au théâtre: 1808–1814. Anthologie (Aix-en-Provence: Univ. de Provence, 1987) and Théâtre et politique pendant la Guerre d'Indépendance espagnole: 1808–1814 (Aix-en-Provence: Univ. de Provence, 1988).

2. ‘Memoria para el arreglo de la policía de los espectáculos públicos y sobre su origen en España’, in Obras publicadas e inéditas de D. Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos, ed. Cándido Nocedal, BAE, XLVI (Madrid: Atlas, 1963), 1, p. 495.

3. Caja 77, expediente 1. I came upon the documents while working in Madrid on a project supported by the Comité Conjunto Hispano-Norteamericano. I am grateful for the Committee's support.

4. Cotarelo y Mori, p. 299.

5. Cotarelo y Mori, p. 521.

6. Théâtre et politique …, p. 541.

7. Théâtre et politique …, p. 74.

8. Théâtre et politique …, p. 543.

9. For an example of the more commonly held view of actors see the excellent study by Gregorio C. Martín, ‘Querer y no poder, o el teatro español de 1825 a 1836’, in Studies in Eighteenth-Century Spanish Literature and Romanticism in Honor of John Clarkson Dowling, ed. Douglas and Linda Jane Barnette (Newark: Juan de la Cuesta, 1985), 123–33.

10. Emmanuel Larraz describes the low esteem in which Spanish authorities held actors during the eighteenth-century in his ‘Le statut des comédiens dans la société espagnole du début de XIXème’, in Culture et société en Espagne et en Amérique Latine au XIXe siècle, ed. Claude Dumas (Lille: Univ. de Lille III, 1980), 27–41.

11. David Thatcher Gies, Theatre and Politics in Nineteenth-century Spain. Juan de Grimaldi as Impresario and Government Agent (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 1988), p. 11.

12. Archivo Histórico Nacional, Consejos, 50, 929, núm. 3; in this group of documents, all of which deal with the problem of the alguaciles, see the one dated 26 March 1850.

13. Archivo Histórico Nacional, Consejos, 50, 932, núm. 34.

14. John J. Allen, The Reconstruction of a Spanish Golden Age Playhouse. El Corral del Príncipe, 1583–1744 (Gainesville: Univ. Presses of Florida, 1983), p. 6.

15. A. H. N., Consejos, 50, 929, núm. 3.

16. In a document dated 21 December 1868 we read that Vicente Delgado and Rafaela Fernández, who was probably an inheritor of Tiburicio Yáñez, continued to hold positions as alguaciles de comedias. This document advises the Provincial Governor of Madrid to permit the elimination of these positions in return for payment of an indemnification (A.H.N., Consejos, 50, 930, núm. 42). One would not be surprised to find that only at this late date, in the revolutionary atmosphere of 1868, the municipality of Madrid was finally successful in freeing itself from its onerous payments to these people.

17. Miguel Artola, Los afrancesados (2nd ed., Madrid: Turner, 1976), p. 49.

18. See René Andioc's profound study of ideology and theatre in the eighteenth century, Teatro y sociedad en el Madrid del siglo XVIII (2nd ed., Madrid: Castalia, 1987).

19. Marie-Thérèse Carrière, ‘Acerca de las pensiones de actores en la Cruz y el Príncipe a mediados del siglo XIX’, Hommage a Jean-Louis Flecniakoska (Montpellier: Univ. Paul Valéry, 1980), I, p. 133.

20. Michael Schinasi, ‘The National Theater in Mid-nineteenth-century Spain’, in Resonancias románticas: evocaciones del romanticismo hispánico en el sesquicentenario de la muerte de Mariano José de Larra, ed. John R. Rosenberg (Madrid: Ediciones José Porrúa Turanzas, 1988), 195–207; W. J. Smith, ‘Rodríguez Rubí and the Dramatic Reforms of 1849’, HR, XVI (1948), 311–22.

21. Real decreto orgánico de los teatros del Reino y reglamento del Teatro Español (Madrid: Imprenta Nacional, 1849). The Real decreto … was also published in the theatre periodical, La Luneta, on 8 February 1849 and may have been published in other Madrid newspapers on or around this same day.

22. Due to the poor condition of the document one word following ‘Reyno’ cannot be read.

23. After the word ‘cómico’, crossed out but still legible, there is the following: ‘y por la mala moral y perversidad de costumbres es lo que más envilece nuestro teatro y halaga y entretiene las de la clase más ínfima del Pueblo’.

24. The word is difficult to read due to the condition of the document, and what seems to be written has been given in brackets. In the rest of the document words that have been difficult to read and that are open to question are given in brackets.

25. Immediately following, crossed out but still legible, there are the words ‘que nada ha hecho todavía’.

26. Immediately following, the words ‘el mal’ have been crossed out.

27. Crossed out, immediately after the word ‘abusos’, we can still read ‘que causan los jubilados’.

28. Immediately following, crossed out but still legible, are the words ‘para que cobrando un sueldo de’.

29. We have not been able to locate the page on which this final paragraph is completed.