ABSTRACT

THE AVANT-GARDE THEATER
OF MIGUEL MIHURA

by Douglas Rich McKay

The early plays of Miguel Mihura, revolutionary in
their scope and configuration, contain a provocative humor
founded upon a sound literary base. Eminent critics and
literary historians have suggested that Mihura's first stage
productions represent a new articulation of dramatic humor
in Spain, inaugurating a special sense of the absurd in
which playful nonsense is fused with a profound sense of
humanity and poetic tenderness. This study considers Mihura's
four plays written before l950 as works containing specific
elements of an avant-garde expression. Viewed as totally
new and incomparable creations, the four comedies are exam-
ined critically in an attempt to evaluate the early period
of Mihura's theater in terms of its literary significance
and as dramatic art.

Part One treats the author’s literary formation.
Mihura’s forerunners and their influence upon him constitute
the subject matter of Chapter One, while Chapter Two deals
with the early life and career of Mihura himself. The drama-
tists Carlos Arniches, Enrique Garcia Alvarez, Carlos Munoz
Seca, and Enrique Jardiel Poncela are discussed in connection

with both chapters of Part One. Likewise the dramatic genres

Douglas Rich McKay

known as the tragedia grotesca and the astracén, as well as

 

the phenomena of stage comedy called jardielismo and humor

 

codornicesco, are defined or alluded to in this section.

In Part Two the following plays are analyzed with re-
spect to theme, structure,characterization, and dramatic con-
tent: ;Viva lo imposible! 0 El contable de estrellas, writ-

ten in collaboration with Joaquin Calvo Sotelo; Ni pobre ni

 

rico, sino todo lo contrario, co-authored by Antonio de Lara
(Tono); El caso de la mujer asesinadita, produced with the
aid of Alvaro de Laiglesia; and Tres sombreros de copa,
Mihura's first and most celebrated work as an independent
playwright. The affinities or contrasts that exist among
these comedies, as well as the stated or apparent intent of
the author, are considered. The overall intention is to
bring into a clearer perspective the importance of Miguel
Mihura in the contemporary theater of Spain.

The study concludes that Mihura fostered a new aes-
thetic posture in playwriting. His avant-garde theater tes-
tifies to the effectiveness of applying a sophisticated and
intellectuallyéoriented humor to dramatic art. Mihura's
dialogue, though deliberately disorbited and absurd on occa-
sion, embodies an internal logic designed to combat artifi-
ciality in human discourse and action. Central to the plot
and design of each comedy is the author’s insistence that a
life of spiritless resignation to routine is wholly intoler-

able. Mihura stresses the merits to be gained through a

Douglas Rich McKay

personal emancipation from the constricting forces of habit,
social convention, and selfish pursuits. He makes clear
this moral attitude by contrasting tke narrow-minded reality
of an orthodox middle-class soCiety to the free-thinki”q ex-
pressions of an unconventional world. The conflicts which
result from this confrontation of two opposing milieux and
- their corresponding characters represent the essence of
Mihura's theater.

The primary source material is Mihura’s published
plays. A number of the playwright's contributions to Lg

Ametralladora, a weekly humor magazine he founded during

 

the Spanish Civil War, and to La Codorniz, a still active

 

periodical he founded in l94| and relinquished in l944, have
also proved useful as documents of the author’s early dramatic
tendencies. Two personal interviews with Mihura and subse-
quent communication with several drama critics in Madrid have
provided access to materials otherwise unobtainable. Over

I80 reviews of Mihura's plays have been consulted to provide

a representation of journalistic criticism to accompany the

more studied critiques appearing in formal articles.

THE AVANT-GARDE THEATER
OF MIGUEL MIHURA

By

Douglas Rich McKay

A THESIS

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Department of Romance Languages

I968

 

45335.27
/~27-'é‘7

© Copyright by
DOUGLAS RICH MC KAY

1969

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

PART ONE: THE LITERARY FORMATION OF
MIGUEL MIHURA

Chapter '
I. MIHURA’S PRECURSORS IN THE TWENTIETH
CENTURY I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I

II. EARLY LIFE AND CAREER . . . . . .

PART TWO: A CRITICAL EVALUATION OF
MIGUEL MIHURA’S AVANT-
GARDE PLAYS

111. A CIRCULAR TREATMENT OF BOREDOM:
;VIVA LO IMposIBLE: O EL CONTABLE.
DE LAs ESTRELLAS. . . . . . . . . . .

IV. A VENTURE INTO THE ABSURD:
NI POBRE NI RICO, SINO TODO LO
CONTRARIO . u I I I I I I I I I I I I

 

V. TOWARD A CONSERVATIVE POSTURE:
EL CASO DE LA MUJER ASESINADITA .

 

VI. TWO WORLDS IN VITAL CONFRONTATION:
TRES SOMBREROS DE COPA. . . . . . . .
CONCLUSION. I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I
APPENDIX. I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I
BIBLIOGRAPHY. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Page

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58

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I42

I79
l83
l85

INTRODUCTION

Miguel Mihura Santos (born in Madrid, I905) is
recognized as one of the most eminent playwrights in the
'Spanish contemporary theater. He is the author of over
twenty full-length plays, numerous dramatic sketches, and
several lengthy essays -- both imaginative and factual --
dealing with his life and career.

Mihura’s reputation as a pioneer in the deveIOp-
ment of a new articulation of dramatic humor was firmly
established between November of I939 and February of I946.
During this period he coauthored three plays of a startling
avant-garde flavor, namely iViva lo imposibIeCL 0 el
contable de estrellas, in collaboration with Joaquin Calvo
Sotelo; Ni pobre ni rico, sino todo lo contrario, in
collaboration with Antonio de Lara (”Tono”); and El caso
de la mujer asesinadita, in collaboration with Alvaro de
Laiglesia. He also promoted the exciting and prOvocative
humor of La Codorniz, the popular weekly magazine which
he founded in I94I and managed until I944. Then, in the
year I952, Mihura reassured the theater world of his
right to the title Spanish critics were disposed to confer
upon him as Spain’s leading exponent of humoristic

invention. He premiered his first and most celebrated

production as an independent playwright, Tres sombreros
de copa, a comedy he had written as a young man twenty
years before.

The staging of Tres sombreros de copa climaxed
an era of carefree exploration with technique and subject
matter. Though one may say with full propriety that
Mihura's entire theater indicates a spirit of calculated
versatility, owing to the author’s own insistence upon a
constant alteration of theme and variety of treatment
with each new play, it is alga apparent that his early
dramas differ from his later comedies in one significant
respect: aside from their versatile design, the avant-
garde writings are characterized by their spontaneity,
unfettered by concessions to public demands.

In this beginning stage of his professional
career, Mihura inaugurates a revolutionary concept of
humor which borders on the absurd and crusades intrepidly
against the fatuous commonplaces of conventional drama.
While unsuccessful in securing a respectable financial
remuneration for his efforts, -- the reason Mihura gives
for later abandoning his avant-garde posture, -- he none?
theless effects a valid artistic gain in the literary
world. His four early plays are totally new and incom-
parable creations. They represent a unique and original
departure from the common existing forms of modern

Spanish drama.

The four plays we will deal with embody a dis-
tinctly intellectual humor that is at once tender, poetic,
enigmatic, and satirical. They reveal above all a
singular attention to subjects of absorbing human interest.
They exemplify the authorfs exceptional artistry in the
construction of the kind of dialogue that grows out of an
authentic, personal techniqUe. The genuine goodness of
his leading characters within a society of degrading or
unjustly established values suggests the playwright's
serious moral concern for some of the basic human problems
of our time.

Revolutionary in their scope and configuration,
Mihura's early writings have only in reCent years been
acclaimed superior in literary excellence to the more
serene and conservative comedies he wrote after I946.
While his later writings have earned him considerable
commercial success and will continue, no doubt, to find
favor with the theatergoing public, the lively plays of
his youth appear to be attracting greater critiCaI ap-
proval, owing to their bold, spontaneous originality and
their sound artistic merits.

It is the purpose of the present study to examine
critically Miguel Mihura's avant-garde theater. An at-
tempt will be made to evaluate this early stage of the

author’s dramatic work in terms of its literary signi-

ficance and as dramatic art. This objective requires an

analysis of the structure and themes of the four above-
mentioned plays and the affinities or contrasts that
exist among them. Our overall intention is to define
and bring into a clearer perspective the importance of
Miguel Mihura in the contemporary theater of Spain.

Considering the lack Of a comprehensive monograph
dealing with this period of Mihura's theater, the present
study assumes no pre-existing criteria or set of values
that can be applied objectively to the plays under con-
sideration. It is therefore necessary to examine each
work with respect to theme, characterization, and dramatic
content, as well as the stated or apparent intent of the
author.

Part One of this study treats the literary forma-
tion of Miguel Mihura. ,In this section two important
aspects of Mihura's background will be examined, in order
to enhance the reader’s total appreciation for his early
theater. These are first, a consideration of his im-
mediate forerunners, their influence upon him, and the
literary legacy they have bequeathed his generation.

The playwrights who comprise this treatment in Chapter
One are Carlos Arniches, Enrique Garcia Alvarez, Pedro
Mufioz Seca, and Enrique Jardiel Poncela. Among the
concepts discussed in relation to their respective
theaters are the tragedia grotesca, the astracén, and
jardielismo. Second, a glimpse into the early life and

career of the author himself will constitute the subject

matter of Chapter Two. This will include observations
about Mihura's working habits and the creative process
behind the gestation and realization of his plays. Be-

cause Mihura’s connection with La Codorniz represents an

 

important facet of his theatrical career, special attention
will attend the matter in this chapter.

Mihura's dramatic works of the avant-garde phase
will be discussed in Part Two. The plays will betreated
in chronological order according to the date of their
respective premieres in Madrid. Those elements most
commonly associated with the questing nature of Mihura's
avant-garde expression will cOmmand our primary attention
throughout the four chapters of this second division of
our study. The notion.of the absurd, for instance, is
one of several facets correlated with the novel and
bizarre humor and the disorbited nature of language which
characterize the author’s early plays. Owing to the
interest accorded the idea of the absurd in contemporary
dramatic literature and the question of Mihura's role or
direction in the pre-Ionesco period of this phenomenon,
the subject will be discussed in connection with our
analysis of two plays, Ni pobre ni rico... and lies
sombreros de cop_,

The primary source material has been Mihura’s
published plays. A number of the playwright's contri-
butions to La Ametralladora, a weekly humor magazine he

founded during the Spanish Civil War, and to the

aforenamed La Codorniz, a still active periodical he

 

relinquished in I944, have also proved useful as docu-
ments of the author’s early dramatic tendencies. I have
been greatly aided by the personalassistance of Mr.
Mihura, who has kindly provided access to materials other-
wise unobtainable. In addition, direct communication and
later correspondence with several drama critics in Madrid
have supplied ideas for this study. Numerous reviews of
Mihura’s plays have been consulted to provide a repre-
sentation of journalistic criticism, a more spontaneous
type of reaction which offers a different perspective

from that inherent in the more studied critiques appearing
in formal articles. Other publications uSed less exten—
sively are also noted in the Bibliography.

It will be of interest to note the existence of
three unpublished theses on various aspects of Mihura’s
theater. Their titles are also listed in the Bibliog-
raphy following the names of their respective authors,
i.e. Barbara Ann Deusen Ingeborg Muur, and Patricio
Pérez Cobas. Deuser's thematic study (in English), made
available through Pennsylvania State University, deals
with five plays, namely: Tres sombreros de copa, A media
I z los tres, Mi adorado Juan, Carlota, and Maribel ygla
extrafia familia. The authoress dichsses each comedy from
the standpoint of satire. Her treatment is very general

and consists in the main of explanatory plot summaries.

Pérez Cobas’ inordinately prolix work (in Spanish)
was acquired through the personal kindness of Mr. Mihura.'
The thesis bears the name of no institution or location
of writing. It is surprisingly void of sound critical
substance despite its 200% pages.

Muur’s treatment of humOr, situation, and charac-
terization (in Norwegian), available through the courtesy
of the authoress, attempts to examine all of Mihura’s
published_plays through La tetera. The project is far
too ambitious, forcing the writer to generalize unduly
and to write plot résumés for each comedy.

Existent monographs, studies, and articles on
Mihura are far from exhaustive. Because the playwright’s
avant-garde phase has not been approached heretofore,
it is strongly felt that this present effort is

justified.

PART~ONE

THE LITERARY FORMATION OF MIGUEL MIHURA

CHAPTER ONE

MIHURA’S PRECURSORS IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Miguel Mihura’s literary line of descent passes
varyingly through Carlos Arniches (l866-l943), Enrique
Garcia Alvarez (l873-l93l), Pedro Munoz Seca (l88l-l936),
and Enrique Jardiel Poncela (l9OI-l952). These writers
are frequently mentioned as the principal dramatists in
the theater of humor of twentieth-century Spain.I

Their legacy to Mihura represents an aesthetic
conditioning more than the conferral of a functional
inventory of technical resources. For a period of almost
fifty years they excited a new artistic reSponse to the
validity of humor in the legitimate theater; they
seasoned both playgoer and critic for the digestion of

novelty within the framework of a traditional form.

These playwrights, however, do not represent a
clearly defined movement of literary intention. Despite
their mutual collaborations, they evince no apparent dis-

position to formulate a school. Collectively they

 

lSee, for instance, the importance accorded them
in J. Rof Carballo et al., El teatro de humor en Espafia
(Madrid: Editora Nacional, I96677 pp. 35—44, 67-8I,
49-6I, 87-IO4, l09-ll9, 22l, 242, 256-258, 267-268.

 

IO

generate a climate conducive to the formation of Miguel
Mihura’s theater, though individually no single writer
mentioned above qualifies as a consummate precursor of
his style and technique. Indeed, Mihura’s early plays,
while similar in scope to the humoristic innovations of
his predecessors, are uniquely Original. They represent
an all too radical departure from the recognized theater
forms of his day to be considered the logical outgrowth

of a unified, linear evolvement.

Because they have relevance to the early life of
Miguel Mihura, the respective theaters of the aforenamed
playwrights warrant our serious consideration. While in
truth they may not betray a measured or Concerted effort
to establish a new current of dramatic humor by conscious
design, there is nonetheless sufficient evidence to sup-
port the idea that without their antecedence, Mihura’s
theater would have been impossible. It is the purpose of
this Chapter to underscore the rationale behind this
premise.

When Mihura was still a young boy, not over
eleven years of age, yet thoroughly exposed even then to
the life and concerns of the theater, Don Carlos Arniches
y Barrera was already in his fiftieth year, in the prime
of his creative work. He was the indisputable master of
the contemporary sainete and had begun to cultivate a

startling new genre in his repertory of dramatic forms,

the tragedia grotesca.2 Mihura admired this latter phase

 

over and above Arniches’ previous productions, parti-
cularly its stress on the subjective involvement of the
protagonist in a struggle for positive heroism, as

illustrated by the play Es mi hombre.

 

In his mature years Arniches deveIOped a more
complete and delicate sense of construction in his plays,
transforming and transfiguring the popular themes of the
sainete into what Pedro Salinas has called "un juego de
comicidad externa y gravedad profunda.”3 Salinas

correctly views the tragedia grotesca as a fundamentally

 

serious form of drama. It resembles the serious inten-
tions of Mihura’s theater in its emphasis on the value
of the human personality, stressing the validity of
constant, guileless ties with one’s fellow beings. Like
Mihura’s theater, it is also tinged with occasional con-
cessions to obtain comic effects, yet these are governed
withal by a natural spontaneity that furnishes us with
what Gonzalez Ruiz has called ”una creacién de auténtico

humor bajo la forma de un juguete cémico."4 This is to

 

2This concept is ably defined by Vicente Ramos in
Chapter Nineteen of his biographical study, Vida y teatro
de Carlos Arniches (Madrid: Alfaguara, I966), pp. l57-l66.

3Literatura Espafiola Siglo XX (Mexico: Editorial
Séneca, l94l), p. I96. 7

4Nicolas Gonzalez Ruiz,.”El teatro de humor del
siglo XX hasta Jardiel Poncela,? in Rof Carballo et al.,
op. cit. (above, note I), p. 38.

l2

say that in the theaters of both Arniches and Mihura we
are not exposed to artificial and shallow comedy; in-
stead, the humor is controlled by an underlying literary
substance that avoids falsification or pure frivolity.
The authors disengage themselves from their respective
characters and from the plot line to permit their creations
a clear autonomy of expression.

The moral and human dimension that characterizes

the tragediaggrotesca is sustained by yet another element

 

common to Mihura's early productions. This is the ever-
increasing importance prescribed to a language that is
. original, expressive, and often nonsensical, intentionally
sprinkled with word plays and figures of speech, es-
pecially hyperbole. It is this aspect that prompted the
critic Diez-Canedo to judge the tragediaggrotesca as an
authentic expression of the modern world and of human
life, out of which the comic types, absurd actions, and
verbal dislocations of Mufioz Seca's theater were to
evolve.5

The names of other major critics might likewise
be cited to corroborate the notion that Arniches’ theater
is solidly and fundamentally one of language, that it

thereby occupies a lasting and significant place in the

 

5Enrique Diez-Canedo, ”Panorama del teatro
espafiol desde l9l4 hasta I936,” Hora de Espafia, XVI
(April, I938), p. 28.

 

l3

development of contemporary Spanish drama.6 Alfredo
Marquerie, for example, designates the cornerstone of
Arniches’ theater as being ”el poderio de la frase,”
through which ”lo que los tipos dicen esté muy por

encima de lo que hacen."7

The same may be said for the
theater of Miguel Mihura.
The principal merit attributed to Carlos Ar-

niches is the same virtue Mihura values most in his own

writings —- the ability to manipulate dialogue to fit a
particular situation. Perhaps as a youngster Mihura was
forcibly impressed by this feature in the aging play-
wright’s theater; of assurance, Arniches’ comically de-
formed words made an impact on Mihura's entire generation.

The incredibly funny disparates and the ingenious but ab-

 

surd reasonings of his dialogues were Arniches' foremost
contributions to the present-day theater. From the old
master, Mihura found a superlative example of ”la

grandisima eficacia teatral del dlélogo.”8

 

6See, for instance, Ramén Pérez de Ayala, gas
méscaras; ensayos de critica teatral (Madrid: Imprenta
clasica eSpafiola, l9l7), II; Arturo Berenguer Carisomo,
El teatro de Carlos Arniches (Buenos Aires: Ateneo
ibero-americano, I937); Gonzalo Torrente Ballester,
Teatro espafiol contemporéneo (Madrid: Guadarrama, I957);
and the aforecited work by Vicente Ramos (above, note 2).

 

7Veinte anos de teatro en Espafia (Madrid:
Editora Nacional, I959), p. 56. .

8Rafael Vésquez Zamora, "Tipos y escenas de
Arniches," Insula, No. 8| (I952), p. l2.

l4

Enrique Garcia Alvarez also occupies a unique
position in the development of dramatic humor before
Mihura. On the one hand, his name is always paired with
that of another among several playwrights, for he was an
indefatigable collaborator who rarely produced plays on
his own.9 On the other hand, he is the acknowledged
creator of a new ”genre” in the Spanish theater, a comic
prescription that bears the name astracan. He himself
promoted the popularity of the astraCén by virtue of his
role in the dual authorship of over one hundred comedias.

As an innovator, however, Garcia Alvarez is fre-
quently overshadowed by the more influential personality
of Munoz Seca who, after coauthoring eight plays with Don
Enrique between l9l4 and I9l6, continued to write innu-
merable plays of his own in the same astracan tradition.IO
Thus Munoz Seca reaped the benefit of his partner’s ori-
ginal ideas and has since been associated almost exclu-
sively with the literary notion of the astracén.

Despite being relegated to an occasional footnote

by most critics, Garcia Alvarez has had a profound

 

9With the exception of El pollo Tejada, La carne

flaca, and La Escala_de Milan, which he wrote unaided,
Garcia Alvarez shared over IDO titles with some twelve
other playwrights. E. C. Sainz de Robles lists his prin-
cipal collaborators as Antonio Paso, Joaquin Abati, Carlos
Arniches, and Munoz Seca. His professional link with both
Arniches and Munoz Seca might suggest that their mutual
affinities of ideas and aesthetic precepts are perhaps
more deliberate than coincidental.

 

IOObras completas de Don Pedro Munoz Seca, ed.
José Maria Bernéldez (Madrid: Ediciones FAX, I954) Vol. I.

 

 

I5

influence on his generation. Alfredo Marquerie refers to
him as "aquel fecundo ingenio, verdadero monstruo de Ia'
gracia popular."ll Mihura mentions him first and foremost
among the authors whose talent determined the ultimate
appearance of a new kind of dramatic humor in Spain.'2
Jardiel Poncela also extols his importance, as illustrated
by the following quotation:
Garcia Alvarez influyo, transformo y aguzo

a quienes ya poseian una manera propia y condujo,

orienté y creo a quienes no tenian todavia un

estilo absolutamente personal.... Ha dado a luz

un teatro cémico violento, grotesco, fantastico,

maravillosamente disparatado, sin antecedentes en

nuestro pais ni en los ajenos.
Jardiel’s tribute singles out Garcia Alvarez as having
inaugurated a direction so entirely new that it establish-
ed its own precedent, although some critics, it must be
remembered, insist that an astracén in embryo may be found
in the tragedias grgtescas of Arniches.

The astracan formula has a significant connec-

tion with the early plays of Mihura, whose avant-garde

theater represents a refinement and consummation of

 

II

ll”Sobre la vida y la obra de don Carlos Arniches,
Cuadernos de Literatura Contemporanea, NOs. 9-l0 (Madrid:
I943), 249, reprinted in Primer Acto, No. l4 (May- June,
I960), D. II.

I2Miguel Mihura, Obras compIetas (Ist ed.;
Barcelona: Editorial AHR, I962), p. 25. Thirteen plays,
three essays, and an autobiographical prologue are con-
tained in this volume. All subsequent references to this
text throughout the present study will cite the author’ 5
name and the title Obras.

l3Enrique Jardiel Poncela, Tres comedias con un
solo ensayo (Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva, I934), p. 25.

 

I6

the genre. It thus behooves us to define the term ac-
cording to its original conception, in order that we
might better appreciate its evolvement in the theater of
Mufioz Seca and its later manifestation in Mihura's
writings.

The astracén is a farcical composition in which
dialogue is central to the cOmiC situation. Its singular
feature is the deliberate reduction of verisimilitude.
Puns, jests, and plays on words are constantly used,‘
contrived solely to evoke laughter. The original

astracan is devoid of serious intention. It depends

 

entirely on repartee and disloCated speech for its effect,
rather than character involvement or a clever plot line.
In the hands of Garcia Alvarez it is totally innocuous,
bearing no hint of political or social parody. It is
likewise far removed from recognizable topics of the

day, excepting an obvious exploitation of the comic pos-
sibilities in everyday speech. It endeavors to untypify
the normal pose and the conventional expressions of
ordinary conversation by means of a travesty on clichés

and platitudes.

Alfredo Marquerie alludes briefly to astracan

 

humor as being most winsome and facetious in its early

(development, a time corresponding to the years of World

VVar I.I4

_‘

v

This historical connection is perhaps a

l4"Novedad en el teatro de Jardiel Poncela," in

~I- Rof Carballo et al., El teatro de humor en Espafia, p. 73.

I7

significant point, for it is during the period of ex-
treme conflagration and turmoil on Northern European soil,
and social disturbance within neutral Spain, that the
tendency to escape into a realm of absurd mirth and
merriment makes its first appearance on stage by way of
the astracén. Indeed, the Argentine critic and dramatist
Jose Maria Monner Sans designates the year l9l8 as the
general beginning of the process of dehumanization in
art.'5 Yet one cannot insist too strongly upon this‘
notion of post-war antirrealism, for we note that only
one decade after the end of World War I, as will be seen
when we refer to the theater of Mufioz Seca, the astracén
takes root in reality. The same language distortion and
verbal nonsense found in the writings of Garcia Alvarez
are then employed to satirize present-day concerns. To
many critics this represents a kind of subversive cor-
ruption of the original astracén concept.

Garcia Alvarez’ primary contribution to the
theater of his day is not alone the ”juguete cOmico
sostenido a fuerza del equivoco,” to which GOnzélez Ruiz
refers;l6 his importance must also be assessed by dint
of the weight and value he gives to dialogue as the

dominant feature of dramatic humor, the same formula

l5Introduccién al teatro del siglo XX (Buenos
#\ires: Columba, I954), pp. 20-2l.

l6Nicolas Gonzalez Ruiz, ”El teatro de humor del
ssiiglo XX hasta Jardiel Poncela,” in J. Rof Carballo §t_
‘3 L:J El teatro de humor en Espafia, p. 39.

l8

which Arniches recognized in proper perspective and which
Mufioz Seca will make use of in a multitude of plays.
Moreover, it is this same property that Jardiel Poncela
will enhance by adding greater rapidity of speech to fast-
moving comic situations, and that Mihura will polish and
perfect by bringing into focus the tenderness, vigor, and
drama of the human personality.

Garcia Alvarez’ work was concluded in I93I, thus
ending what Miguel Mihura has called ”el caso mas extra-
ordinario de la vagancia en el teatro moderno,” referring
to the author’s assiduous collaboration and boundless

I7 His role in the development of the contemporary

energy.
theater of humor has been grossly underrated and merits
a serious revaluation.

While Garcia Alvarez is the recognized initiator
of the astracén, its chief arquitect and producer is
Pedro Mufioz Seca. Under his prolific authorship the
astracén deveIOps from a moderate exorbitance in dialogue
into the most lavish exhibition of vocalized inverisimi-

litude and absurdity to be witnessed on the Spanish stage.

The drama critic Gonzalez Ruiz terms the quarter-century

of the astracén’s currency a time of ”frenesi de la

¥
f

I7Information conveyed in a personal interview
vvith Miguel Mihura, June 9, I967.

I9

exageracién y de disparate.”I8 It is during this period
that Mufioz Seca reigns supreme as its foremost advocate,
producing with notable technical skill what Valbuena Prat
labels ”un teatro de puro disparate, de puro chiste."I9

Except for enIarging upon the astracan, restating
its design and composition with increased verbal drol-
lery, Mufioz Seca adds no new dimensions to the original
concept as we have already defined it. Its basic for-
mulas of dislocated speech and comic jests, its illogical
characterizations and implausible happenings, he fully
exploits without noticeable deviation or mutation until
late in his career. He perpetuates an established trend,
merely intensifying the impact of its humOr with a heavy
stress on colloquial wit and an occasional pronouncement
of gibes and sneers, conceived in a tone described by one
of his most successful admirers as being ”un poco mordaz,
restallante, eXplosiva, rapida, inesperada.”2O These
characteristics contribute to heighten the hilarity of his-
plays and to distinguish his theater from the more subdued
figmor disparatado of his predecessors.

I8Nicolas Gonzalez Ruiz, Ioc. cit. This writer

designates the years |9I2 to I936 as the "lifetime” of
13he astracén. The year l9l2 represents the estreno of
li‘ampa y carbOn, Munoz Seca’s first conscious effort to
f:Oster the genre. He thereafter cultivated the astracén
wi'thout cessation until his assassination in I936.

 

I9Angel Valbuena Prat Historia del teatro espafiol
(Eiarcelona: Noguer, I956), p. 63.

20 . , .
Alfonso Paso, "Munoz Seca: El astracan, genero de
abl“i go," La Estafeta Literaria, Nos. 282-283 (Madrid,

JarfiLJary 4-l8, I964), 54.

20

In further contrast to the plays of Garcia
Alvarez, we find in the theater of Mufioz Seca an in-
creased concentration on exaggerated situations and a
deliberate effort to caricature the society and events
of his own day. This is particularly true in the final
phase of his writing career, when he employs the astracan
as-a fierce political weapon, its jokes and barbs in-
tended to parody, satirize, and burlesque the contemporary
scene. Yet even in his combative and satirical period,
Mufioz Seca attempts no radical departure from the basic
resources and devices of the astracén which he inherited
from his close friend and fellOw collaborator. His farce,
unlike that of Garcia Alvarez, is incisive and domi-
nantly germane to current problems, but by no means acri—
monious or pessimistic. It is more likely that the strong
tinge of cynicism underlying Mihura’s early theater is
an outgrowth of Jardiel’s drama rather than a reflection
of Munoz Seca’s lightly corrosive but basically opti-
mistic satire.

Mufioz Seca's importance with regard to later
deVelopments in the theater also lies in the attention
he devotes to dialogue as the primary vehicle for humor,
a dialogue independent of the stylized inventions of
lArniches and free from the costumbrista leanings of
(Sarcia Alvarez. It is this special sense of dialogue,
t:his insistance on the vitality of the comic utterance

tlhat, when later tempered and shorn of its rough and

2l

often unbenevolent properties, becomes the hallmark of
Miguel Mihura’s theater.

Mufioz Seca generated plays as rapidly as he
appropriated new notions. To a large extent his suc-
cess and reputation as the leading promoter of the
astracén was based on his amazingly rich productivity.

His name was constantly before the public. At the age of
forty he was premiering on an average of ten plays a year.
Mihura was then fifteen years old and informs us that he
never missed an estreno from the pen of this renowned
humorist.2|

Those who assess the importance of twentieth-
century Spanish drama are seemingly divided in their
evaluation of Munoz Seca. The widest disagreement con-
cerning his literary merit exists between the stated
opinions of literary artists, who value his legacy of
unrestrained humor and theatrical inventiveness over his

socio-political posture, and those of the drama critics,

who accuse him of removing the astracén out of the domain

 

of literature and prostituting its inherently atemporal
formulas by confinement within the arena of politics and

social criticism.

Azorin, for example, is one of Munoz Seca’s most

ardent defenders. He lauds the rigorous construction of

2'Mihura, Obras, p. 25.

22

his plays, suggesting in passing that had he been a
Frenchman his statue would have been crowned with laurel
and placed on the Elysian Fields, but as a Spaniard he
was lucky to have had a street named after him.22 Jardiel
Poncela also praises the definitive literary accomplish-
ments of the‘playwright, ranking him second only to Garcia
Alvarez as the most important dramatic writer of his
time.23 Alfonso Paso pays him high tribute in a serious
essay regarding his artistic skills.24 Mihura likewise
affirms a life-long admiration for the energy, optimism,
creativity, and imagination of Munoz Seca; indeed, Mihura
relates that as a young man he often defended the older

I!

playwright’s reputation, a gritos en los vestibulos de

los teatros, cuando algun viejo estupido y malintencionado

intentaba atacarle.”25

As for these attacks Mihura speaks of, they too
have been legion, not alone from ”stupid and indiscreet
old men,” but as well from responsible critics and writers)
of sound judgment. A favorable biography, published as

early as I939, did little to invalidate Munoz Seca’s

¥

I
22Quoted in Alfonso Paso, "Mufioz Seca: el
eastracén...," Ioc. cit. (above, note 20).

 

23”Lectura de cuartillas," Tres comedias...,
225;. cit. (above, note l3), p. 25. '

24”Munoz Seca: el astracan...," 9p. cit.,
DD. 54-56. .

25Mihura, Obras, p. 25.

23

growing disrepute as a writer of mere marginal literary
significance.26 Such is the position of Gonzalo Torrente
Ballester, who finds his theater confused and contra-
dictory, "sin gran importancia literaria, pero de enorme
importancia social."27 In an earlier article Torrente
discredits the astracan altogether as a literary genre,
pOinting to the negative and destructive elements of its
unfOIding in the later plays of Munoz Seca.28 Juan Chabés
is explicitly condemnatory in his consideration of the
astracan, stating that "el género debiera excluirse de

los Capitulos dedicados a la historia del teatro.”29
This negative sentiment is echoed in the writings of
several other major critics and literary historians, most
of whom base their unfavorable comments upon the drama-
tist’s plays after I930.3O Yet virtually all of his

critics -- the detraCtors as well as the apologists --

are in unanimous accord over the historical importance of

 

26José Montero Alonso, Pedro Mufioz Seca: Vida,

ingenio y asesinato de un comediOgrafo espafiol TMadrid:
Ediciones espafiolas, I939).

2709. cit. (above, note 6), p. 36.

28”Cincuenta afios de teatro espafiol y algunas
cosas mas," Escorial: Revista de cultura y_jetras, No. I0
(August, l94l7, pp. 275-277.

29Literatura espafiola contemporanea (La Habana:
Editorial CuIturaI, I952), p. 64l.

30Among the writers who represent this view are
Enrique de Mesa, Melchor Fernandez Almagro, Alfredo
Marquerie, Cristébal de Castro, Angel Valbuena Prat,
and Emiliano Diez-Echarri.

24

the comic factor in his theater. His novel astracanadas

 

II

represent, as Nicolas Gonzalez Ruiz writes, el germen de

un teatro posterior.”3l

In a general sense their revo-
lutionary flavor inaugurates a distinctive phase of the
theater of the absurd in Spanish literature, insofar as
‘language is concerned. The critic Francisco Garcia Pavén

”el

has Munoz Seca’s astracén in mind when he writes that
teatro de humor ha supuesto el Onico vanguardismo autén-
tico del arte dramatico espar’iol.”32

The theater of Mufioz Seca thus represents an es-
sential link in the chain of dramatic satire, connecting
a pre-war theater of farcical humor, designed largely to
amuse and to entertain, with post-war soCial satire of a
somewhat more corrosive and serious intent. His major en-y
dowment to Miguel Mihura is the proven formula, verified
in his best plays, that dialogue constitutes the most
authentic medium for conveying a humor that, when devoid
of topical imprecations, is pregnant with human meaning
and literary substance. Mufioz Seca’s tendency to satirize
the current scene is sparingly reflected in Mihura’s

theater, but while Mufioz disowns his epoch with obvious

<3xasperation, Mihura, as we shall see, accepts his world

k

3|La cultura espafiola en Ios«ultimos veinte afios:
El teatro (Madrid: InsITtuto de CuItura HispénTca, T9497:
9- 27.

 

32Francisco Garcia Pavén, "Inventiva en el teatro
de Jardiel Poncela," in J. Rof Carballo et al., El teatro
de humor en Espafia, p. 89.

 

25

as he finds it, adding a new dimension of human com-
passion and poetic tenderness to soften its most nega-
tive features.

Of the four dramatists under discussion, Enrique
Jardiel Poncela is Mihura’s most immediate contemporary.
Only four years separate their respective ages, Jardiel
being the elder. Yet his first major success, Unagnoche
de primavera sin suefio (I927), precedes Mihura’s initial
production by a full twelve years, and Jardiel had already
produced eleven unsuccessful plays before that date. His
theater begins chronologically at a time corresponding to
the advent of Munoz Seca’s socio-political satires; it
represents, in point of fact, a combative effort to oppose

”el astracan de baja extraccion” which Pérez Minik calls

033

”el popularismo grosero de Munoz Seca.

It would be superfluous to recount Jardiel’s
theatrical innovations. Creditable biographies and mono-
graphs have treated this subject since the year I945,
providing evidence that a large segment of critiCal
opinion declares for Jardiel’s decisive influence on the

34

Spanish comic theater. Nevertheless, that which is

 

 

33Domingo Pérez Minik, Teatro europeo contem-

 

 

.EELCéneo; su libertadgy compromisos (Madrid: Guadarrama,
,96l)' p. 298. ‘

‘t 34Among those studies consulted, the following
P‘r‘ee works appear to be of most critical value: Alfredo
dahquerie, El teatro de Jardiel Poncela (Bilbao: Ediciones
£;_:? (Conferencias y Ensayos, I945); Robert Edward Hammar-
r‘and, "The Comic Spirit in the Plays of Enrique Jardiel
ghcela" (Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis, University of

26

uppermost to our present concern is Jardiel’s direct
connection with Miguel Mihura and the extent to which the.
younger playwright was affected by his predecessor’s
"teatro deliberadamente desorbitado y caricatural."35 To
this end we will direct our attention in the concluding
portion of the present chapter.-

' During the years l927-I934 Jardiel and Mihura
collaborated frequently on articles for the magazines
Buen Humor and Gutierrez. Together they espoused the
same aesthetic posture which Tono, Neville, Lépez Rubio,
and others shared in common with them, that is, a desire
to renew and rejuvenate Spanish comedy. ‘Their individual
efforts fomented a startling new direction in humor,
wherein parody, caricatUre, irony, and satire were com-
bined in a struggle against the banality and dullness of
everyday communication. When Jardiel detached himself from
journalistic endeavors to further this trend in the
theater, his independent inventiveness tended more and
more toward extravagance of comic situation, a withdrawal
from explicable plot lines, and a penchant for elaborating.
upon abstraction and incongruency, all of which resulted

in the perpetuation of the absurdist spirit in Spanish

 

California, Berkeley, l966); Rafael Flérez, Mio Jardiel;
bioggafia de un hombre que esté debajo de un almendro en
flor: ‘Enrigue‘jardielPoncela (Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva,

 

I966).

35Marquerie, El teatro de Jardiel PonceLa (above,
note 34), p. 27.

27

drama, a moVement tagged by Marquerie as "el Jardielismo"
in contemporary literature.36

Mihura, on the other hand, inclined toward a more
natural, simple, and humanized world, never losing sight
of the relevance of a sound character portrayal to the
circumstances of a recognizable-milieu. Mihura’s theater
was to reflect greater judgment and introspection into
the profundities of human nature, while Jardiel’s plays
were to display an uninhibited exuberance of farce, in
which a highly histrionic and artificial comicity would
be maintained by means of visual effects, slapstick, and
rapidity of stage action.

Both Jardiel and Mihura have sufficient in common,
however, to be classified as humorists of the same basic
stock. An identical striving to avoid worn and tired
forms in comedy is apparent in each writer. The same
search for the unusual and the imaginative characterizes
their respective theaters. Their aims coincide in regard
to a flight from verisimilitude as an expressed scorn for
the realistic comedy. They equally share the spirit of
the early astracén with its humor disparatado and its

fondness for parody and punning. Their similarities in

36Ibid. Marquerie stood virtually alone in his
praise for Jardiel. His first brief study (I945) was
published at a time of extreme critical furor against the
playwright. Marquerie’s constant devotion to the writer
did-most to sway public and critical opinion in his favor.
The term "Jardielismo" is used today to designate the
entire absurdist trend we have been discussing in this
chapter.

28

(this regard are so clOse, in fact, that Jardiel once
angrily accUsed Mihura of plagiarism, in reference to

some of the latter’s writings for La Codorniz. Alfredo
Marquerie invalidates this charge by stating that Jardiel
was hounded by jealousy; that upon learning of Mihura’s
expanding popularity, Jardiel presaged the rank and
notoriety Mihura was to attain in the annals of the

modern Spanish drama. Jardiel was piqued, reports Marque-
rie, to have discovered an able competitor rather than a
mere disciple, and thus he reverted to sarcasm and dis-

37 The feud was not long-lived and Mihura speaks

dain.
today with high regard concerning Jardiel, whose theater,
he remarked, ”contribuyo a preparar el ambiente para

38 Mihura, inciden-

nuestra manera de entender el humor."
tally, views his own theater as a totally distinct pheno-
menon from that of Jardiel’s:
Lo que cultivo yo es un teatro intimista.
Lo Jardielesco es un teatro de embrollo. Pero
lo que si tenemos en comun es el hecho de ser
miembros de la misma generacién.
Mihura agrees with Marquerie in estimating Jar-
diel’s overall importance. The author’s revivifying

energy gave rise to a new respect for the whole area of

 

37”Jardiel y el Jardielismo," La Estafeta
Literaria, No. 3l2 (February 27, I965), l9.

38Quoted from a personal interview with Miguel
Mihura, June 9, I967.

39Ibid.

29

popular comedy in Spain. Professor Juan R. Castellano
remarks that of all Spanish playwrights who'have written'
since this man, only Tono and Mihura have achieved greater
success in the Jardielesque tradition; the latter rep-

resent, through their play Ni pobre ni rico, sino todo lo

 

contrario, the consummation of an epOch. "El humor jar-
dielesco,” Dr. Castellano writes, ”marca la transicién
entre la parodia de Mufioz Seca y el teatro de humor de la
postguerra."40
Jardiel transmitted to Mihura an example of skilled
techniCal versatility. He illustrated the performability
of unrestraint in the complex structure of a play. He
demonstrated the popular acceptance of the detective or
mystery play, a comedy of intrigue and entanglement that
Mihura, among others, has since essayed with great suce
cess. He bequeathed as well an object lesson in the
titling of his plays, which feature contrast and inveri-

similitude in the choice of bizarre and unusual wording,

geared to attract, shock, or startle the playgoer.4|

Above all, Jardiel preserved for Mihura’s im-

proved handling the salient trait that his forerunners

 

40Juan R. Castellano, "El teatro espafiol desde
I939,” Hispania, XXXIV (August, l95l), 242.

 

4IExamples of Jardiel’s repertory: El amor sOlo
dura 2000 metros (l94l); Los ladrones somos gente
honradaIl94l); Los habitantes de la casa deshabitada
(I942); TG‘ygyo somos tres (I945); Como mejor estén Ias.
rubias es con patatas (I947).

30

had fostered with great aptitude: the conversational
form of humor, wherein dialogue carries a considerable
burden of meaning and takes precedence over stage action;
wherein the language by itself approximates the formulas
of the Theater of the Absurd. _Mihura was to become the
central and most consummate artist of his generation in
this single regard, though clearly his way had been pre-
pared through the verbe, the exuberance, the inventive
word-play, and the hyperbolic playfulness with language
that characterized the comic dialogues of Jardiel Poncela.
We have attempted to underscore the significance
of influence in Miguel Mihura’s theater, citing some
general affinities he shares in common with his most dis-
tinguished precursors. 'The nature of this study has
limited our consideration to the aforenamed writers alone.
A complete list of those responsible for the formulation
of a new framework of theatrical aesthetics in this cen-
tury would include such names as Joaquin Calvo Sotelo,
Alejandro Casona, Antonio Lara, Alvaro de Laiglesia, José
LOpez RUbio, Edgar Neville, José Maria Peman, Victor Ruiz
Iriarte, and Alfonso Paso, not to mention the vital sway
and motivation exerted upon this generation from the pens
of Ramén del Valle-Inclén (l866-I936) and RamOn GOmez de
la Serna (I888-I963), whose respective connections with
the absurdist trend in Spanish drama is fundamental but

as yet only superficially studied.

3|

Mihura, then, is a member of a unique generation
of comic playwrights, all responding to the incitement
and inspiration of a common ambiente, yet disengaged from
promoting a conscious, collective effort to constitute
a school. The problem in ascribing direct influences on
Mihura is therefore primarily speculative; indeed, Mihura
himself is disinclined to admit having sought ideas or
inspiration from any single forerunner, notwithstanding
the exemplary patterns from which he could well have
molded his theater had he been less original.42 Mihura,
in his modesty, prefers to be considered a part of those
who partook of a similar vocation, who shared a strOng
bond of conviviality, and who individually fostered a new
and provocative type of humor, owing to the stimulus of
a given historical moment.

The famous Italian humorist Pitigrilli, whose
Cuentos dialogados have been compared to Mihura’s bizarre

playlets and sketches of La Codorniz, has taken a similar‘

 

position with respect to the idea of a coincidental rap-

port among members of the same generation. In a letter

directed to Mihura from Paris, dated May i9, I965,

 

421n an interview with Manuel Diez Crespo,
recorded in Primer Acto, Nos. 29—30 (December l96l -
January I962), 9, Mihura stated: "Aunque uno no se dé
cuenta de aquellos autores que nos gustan, siempre nos
queda algo. Sin embargo, no creo que ninguno de ellos,
en particular, haya influido en mi."

32

Pitigrilli states: ”Tu y yo estabamos en el aire. Es
una coincidencia debida a los tiempos, a la evolucién.”43'
To point out the uniqueness and the significance

of Mihura’s own contributions to the theater of humor will

be the objective of the ensuing chapters.

 

43Information obtained from Mihura’s personal
correspondence, through an interview of June 9, I967.

CHAPTER TWO

EARLY LIFE AND CAREER.

Miguel Mihura was twenty-seven years of age when,
on the tenth day of November, I932, he completed writing
Tres sombreros de copa. While the play was not published
until I943 nor premiered until I952, the date of its
writing marks the advent of Mihura’s dramatic career. It
represents the point of departure for his subsequent im-
mersion in playwriting following many years of zealous
interest in diverse aspects of the theater. The year
I932 is thus a pivotal year toward which the incidents of
his youth tended and from which an active involvement in
dramaturgy for the sake of writing plays was evolved. It
is the purpose of this chapter to answer two major ques-
tions in connection with the years antedating I932 and
the two decades following: First, what were the salient
events and circumstances in Mihura’s early life that
influenced his choice of career? And second, which
events and circumstances have had a direct bearing on the
nature of his theater work? In addition to our concern
with basic facts pertaining to his life and career, it

will be of interest to a later evaluation of his plays

that we discuss also in this chapter the author’s

33

34

aesthetic precepts, the characteristic manner of his

creativity, and the human nature or disposition of

Mihura himself.

I

Two important circumstances in Mihura’s boyhood
contributed to formulate a propitious climate for the
incubation and development of his talents. The first of
these was the influence of his father, the actor, author,
and theater manager Miguel Mihura Alvarez. The second
was Mihura’s personal vauaintance with other theater
people, notably several reputable playwrights. We will
first discuss the impact upon Mihura from each of these
two factors.

When Miguel was born (July 2|, I905), his father,
then twenty-eight years old, was a high ersteemed comic

actor and an enterprising writer of zarzuelas, sainetes,

 

 

and comedias. In the year I905, for instance, he was

playing the lead in La mala sombra by the brothers

 

Quintero and in El pobre Valbuena by Carlos Arniches and
Garcia Alvarez. At the same time he was writing plays
with Ricardo Gonzalez del Toro, whom Miguel has since
praised as his father’s ”entrafiable,-Ieal y estupendo

colaborador.”I Inasmuch as his father remained in the

acting profession until Miguel was sixteen, we are not

 

lMihura, Obras, p. 20.

35

surprised to encounter a statement such as this from
Mihura's own pen:
En mi casa yo sOIo oia hablar de teatro,
de aplausos, de cantables, de mutis, de
situacéones cOmicas, de éxitos y de fra-
casos.

Mihura relates that one of his greatest pleasures
was that of hiding behind an armchair in his father’s
study, a room teeming with autographed pictures of famous
writers, actors, and actresses, from whence he would
listen to his father and Gonzalez del Toro discuss the
intricacies of stage effects, humor, titles, and denoue-
ments, while they planned a scene for their new play. He
recalls the fascination of frequent visits, beginning at
the age of five, to his father’s dressing room, and being
privileged a few years later to occupy an orchestra seat
in the theater hall, to watch over and over again the
same plays, ”sin perder un detalle."3

Mihura learned at an early age what he calls "los
terribles nervios del teatro," that is, onstage timing,
backstage control, and the concern, insecurity, and vanity
of performers. Owing primarily to the immediate example
of his father, he acquired above all a great sympathy for

actors and a lasting admiration for the acting profession.

This is clearly demonstrated in the intimate and kind

 

2Mihura, Obras, p. 20.
3IbId., p. 2i.

36

regard he holds for performers as he directs his own plays,
and it is likewise borne out in his preference to write a
work that will display the talents of a specific Thespian
rather than oblige the specifications of a promoter.4
During his years of apprenticeship with his
father, observing and admiring the complexities of
theatercraft, Mihura completed his bachillerato at the
Colegio de San Isidro. He then decided to study music,
particularly the piano, imbued with a desire to become a
musician. The effort, however, utterly bored him, and he
turned instead to a study Of drawing and of languages,
principally French. These fields were likewise unful-
filling, though he did profit sufficiently from his French
studies to be able to read the majority of plays in the
contemporary French theater. Miguel abandoned his formal
education in l92l, the year in which his father retired
as an actor to become theater manager for both the Teatro
Cémico and the Teatro de Rey Alfonso (now the Arniches)
in Madrid. His father employed the young boy, who was
now sixteen years old, in the box office of the Rey'
Alfonsa, a position Miguel relished with infinite delight.
It brought him within close proximity of both the stage
performance and the performing artists. He attended
rehearsals daily and never missed an estregg, Thus ac-

quainted early with the miseries and jubilations of the

 

4Information conveyed in a personal interview with
Mihura in December of I964.

37

acting profession, Mihura learned everything first hand

about the theater:
Aprendi apasionadamente, por verdadera
vocacién, todo lo que se puede aprender
en el teatro.v Lo Onico que no aprendi,
porque no me interesgba aprenderlo, er
a escribir comedias. '

Despite his professed disinterest in writing for
the theater at this time, Mihura had already begun to
write short article and stories for humor magazines. He
drew sketches and cartoons for the newspapers La Voz, EL
Sol, and Ya. These occasional contributions led to later
assignments to write for the pre—war periodicals Buen
Humor, Gutiérrez, Cosgillas, and Muchas Gracias, under
the pseudonyms Miguel Santos and El Conde de Pepe. Not
infrequently did he compose farcical, single-column, one—
act sketches in play form, the kind of writing activity

he later excelled in under various pseudonyms for the

magazine La Codorniz.

 

The year I92| was decisive in Mihura’s formative
theater training. At this juncture his interest shifted
from actors to authors, a fact coinciding with his
father’s change in professional status. In like manner

as he had perceived with sensitive awareness the joys or

sorrows of stage artists, he now identified himself on a

personal level with the writers who came to his father’s

 

5Mihura, Obras, p. 27.

38

theater to read or to rehearse their plays. He noted
particularly their brooding melancholy and cynicism in
the face of failure, or their vaulting elation in anti-
Icipation of a triumph. I I

His father introduced him to such prominent
figures as Pedro Munoz Seca, Carlos Arniches, and Enrique
Garcia Alvarez, three playwrights who exercised a para-
mount role in the development of the kind of humor in
which Mihura was to distinguish himself a decade later.6

Mihura recalls having witnessed the dreadful fear
of Arniches who, despite having premiered well over one
hundred works and being perhaps the most acclaimed author
of the time, would come down to the box office during an
estreno and remain at Mihura’s side, "palido, silencioso,
descompuesto, esperando el fallo del publico.”7

The young Mihura had great esteem for the play-
wright Mufioz Seca, whom he remembers as a most ingenious,
cordial, and optimistic gentleman whose talents and in-

ventiveness left him in constant wonder.8 During the

years that Miguel was engaged in the business end of
theater life (l92I-l928), attending with interest all

current productions in Madrid, Munoz-Seca premiered some

 

6See Chapter One for a discussion of the respec-
tive theaters and aesthetic precepts of these authors.

7Mihura, Obras, p. 25.
81bid.

39

fiftyefive plays in the Spanish capital.9 This fact
alone indicates the tremendous amount of exposure young
Miguel had to the theater of the venerated playwright
whose twenty-nine year career produced over I70 plays.
Among all of his dramatiSt friends, Mihura's most
cherished acquaintance was that with Enrique Garcia
Alvarez (l873-I93l) who, at the age of fifty, was still
actively responding to the demands of theater managers
and the public. Mihura valued the importance of this
extraordinary personality to such an extent as to assign
to him a kind or patriarchal role in the development of
his own and other’s dramatic efforts. In I943 he wrote

”el autor que yo mas he admirado en

of Garcia Alvarez as
mi juventud, el mas desorbitado, el menos burgués, quizés
el maestro de los que después empezamos a cultivar Io
disparatado."l0

His personal contacts with the aforenamed drama-
tists afforded Mihura the experience of open conviviality
with dynamic individuals. Their lives and artistic.
labors contributed to actuate Mihura’s choice of career;

they facilitated his gaining an insight into the for-

mulation of a work of dramatic art from its creation to

 

9Pedro MUfiOZ Seca, Obras Completas, ed. José
Maria Bernéldez (Madrid: Ediciones FAX, I954), II-VII.
Nearly half of the above-mentioned plays were written
in collaboration with Pedro Pérez Fernandez.

l0Mihura, Obras, p. 25.

40

its realization. While not prompted to write a play at
this time, Mihura acquired an aesthetic stimulation and
a practical understanding of dramaturgy through his boy-
hood acquaintance with established playwrights. From his
actor and actress friends he learned the great importance
of a triumph or a failure.‘ From his father Mihura dis-
covered the complexities and compensatiomsof theatercraft.
In no small way is the evaluation of Joaquin Aguirre
Bellver unerring when he states that "el teatro de Mihura
es, primero, una vocacién juvenil irrefrenable, nacida de
la compenetracién con su padre y de la compenetracién con
su ambiente."II
’A few years following the death of his father
(I925), an event occurred which had a direct bearing on
the writing of Tres sombreros de copa. The full particu-
lars of this episode, together with an account of the
problems involved in the production of his best play, are
colorfully chronicled in the aforecited prologue to Eggs
sombreros de cope and need no repetition here. However,
we should recall in passing the single event that
inspiOEd the famous comedy, inasmuch as the occasion sug-
gests a curious pattern which will manifest itself in

other of Mihura’s writings.

 

ll”Miguel Mihura, 0 el grillo en el hogar,"
Madrid, November 25, l96l, p. 9.

4|

According to Mihura’s own report, he once toured
theSpanish provinces for twenty days as director Of'a
strange troupe of actors. The troupe consisted of six
blonde Viennese dancers, a French dancing instructor, a
Negro dancer from Canada, another Negro dancer from Cuba,
and a fat German snake charmer accompanied by his two
snakes. The play Tres sombreros de copa clearly had its
inception in this tour, and we have Mihura’s testimony to
that effect.'2 The fact that the negro Buby, the viva-
cious dancers, their suitors, and the other extraordinary
characters who invade Dionisio’s hotel room were directly
inspired from this incident of real life, indicates
Mihura’s penchant for converting some unexpected and
seemingly unbelievable details from actual circumstances
into an equally incongruous but meaningful context of
drama. I

A further example of this tendency can be noted

in the chain of events that gave rise to Melocotén en

 

almibar.l3 Early in I958 Mihura attended the American
movie "Riflfi" in San Sebastian. He then returned to his
hotel, bothered by a headcold, and sat in the lobby to
order a cofiac. At that moment a group of nuns arriving
from Lourdes pulled up in a car. Mihura observed one of

them sit down near him to write a postcard. Suddenly the

 

I2Mihura, Obras, p. 30.
I3See Primer Acto, No. 9 (July-August, I959), 4-5.

 

42

subject matter for a new play burst upon him. The strange
admixture of gangsters from ”Rififi", a bad cold, and a
returning expedition of nuns suggested to Mihura’s imagi-
nation all of the amusing contrasts and possibilities we

a u o l I I ' '
find reallzed ln his comedy, Melocoton en almlbar.

 

This same affinity between casual occurrences from~
life and the gestation of a creative work is typified in

the nascent stage of other specific plays. El caso de la

 

sefiora estupenda, for example, was inspired by wartime
events in Rome during the year l94l. ”Aquel ambiente
influyo en el arranque de la comedia,” Mihura tells us.'5
Maribel y la extrafia familia is an example of a
play whose inception was borne from the merest of trifles,
in this case a simple statement Mihura had frequently
heard addressed to prostitutes: ’Supongo que vivirés solo,
ano?’. "De esa sola frase,” Mihura declares, ”nacio una

. l6
comedla."

The conclusion is obvious that Mihura’s personal
experiences have prevailed-upon his works. His plays are
not the result of a total imaginative effort. ”Me salen

mas fécilmente las comedias de aventura, las que he vivido

 

l4According to Mihura, the attempt by some critics
to ascribe the inspiration for this play to Chesterton’s
Father Brown is wholly erroneous.
l5"Autocritica," ABC (Madrid), February 6, I953,
p. 32.

6Primer Acto, No. 9 (July-August, I959), 5.

43

un poco," he remarked in a personal interview.'7 On an
earlier occasion he confessed that "todas mis comedias
esténinspiradas en algo real, en alguna pequefia obser-
vaciOn personal."l8
Following the twenty day excursion with "Alady,"
Mihura returned to Madrid to collaborate intensely on
newspaper articles and to write dialogues for three
movie scripts. He was not long in discovering the finan-
cial advantages of writing scripts and adapting dialogues

for the Spanish film industry. Between the years I934

and I952 he worked as guionista and dialogist on twenty-
l9

 

five motion pictures. His plays Mi adorado Juan and

 

Una mujer cualquiera were first written as movie scripts
(both in I949), then later adapted to the stage.20
Mihura’s film activity became more and more intensified
over these eighteen years because of his progressive
dissilusionment with the legitimate stage, which prior

to the popular triumph of Tres sombreros de copa had

 

'7June 9, l967.
l8Primer Acto, No. 9 (July-August, I959), 5.
l9José Monledn "Ficha de Mi I M'h " M' l
gue l ura l ue
' ' 'l§2_)—65 ,

Mihura: Teatro, ed. José Monleén (Madrid: Taurus,
pp. 3| '33-

 

20Six of Mihura’s other plays have also been
filmed, namely, ;Viva lo imposiblef, Ni pobre ni rico...,
Sublime decisién TUhder the title SOIo para hombres),
Carlota, Melocotén en almibar, and Maribel.... However,
unlike Mi adorado Juan and Una mujer cualquiera, these
were adapted for the cinema after their earTier stage
productions.

 

44

proportioned him meager economic returns. El caso de la

 

mujer asesinadita, for instance, drew a profit of only

twelve thousand pesetas, or two-hundred dollars.2|

Mihura was comfortable as a guionista, preferring

 

the almost anonymous labor, free from publicity, which the
vocation allowed him. He habitually shunned public noto-
riety during the period of his movie career, but was
instantly catapulted into national and international
prominence with the tremendous stage sUccess of Ines
sombreros de copa, a fact which determined once and for
all the course and future career to which he would devote
the rest of his life.

Aside from giving rise to two major plays,
Mihura’s film work contributed meaningfully to his play-
writing skills in a professional and technical way. The
flashback technique in Carlota is an example of his per-
ceptive manipulation of time and action, learned in the
studies of the movie industry.

An additional activity conducive to success in
playwriting was Mihura’s journalistic inventiveness in
the founding of La Ametralladora (I936-I939) and the

management of La Codorniz (l94l-l944). In the former

 

publication, circulated weekly from San Sebastian during

the war years, Mihura collaborated with Edgar Neville and

 

2|A.D. Olano, reported in his review of Mihura’s
Una mujer cualqujera, in El Alcézar (Madrid), April 4,
l953, p. 5.

45

Antonio de Lara ("Tono"), both of whom had begun writing
independently ”un humor abstracto y desorbitado" as early
as I92‘8.22 La Ametralladora was a miscellany of surface
humor taken mainly from borrowed sources, principally
Italian, and designed to entertain trench soldiers. It
brought in an enormous revenue, some three million
pesetas.

Mihura’s contributions to La Ametralladora con-
sisted largely of recasted articles previously published
in Gutierrez and other slick, urban magazines. Of
interest to students of his theater are the occasional
dialogue sketches appearing on the magazine’s enormous
pages, containing the kind of absurd humor characteristic
of his first four plays.

The enterprise which proved especially lucrative
and provided Mihura with abundant opportunities to ex-
periment further with dialogued playlets was the editor-
ship of the engaging weekly magazine of twenty—four pages,
La Codorniz. Mihura founded the publication in l94l,
directed it until I944, then relinquished his post to
Alvaro de Laiglesia, having become ”cansado de tanta

tonteria."23_

 

22Evaristo Acevedo, Teoria e interpretacién del
humor espafiol (Madrid: Editora Nacional, I966), p. 250.

23Juan Guerrero Zamora, Historia del teatro
contemporaneo (Barcelona: Juan FTCrs, I962), III, I78.

 

46

La Codorniz acquired social importance under
Mihura’s direction. With apparent but innocuous cynicism,

the magazine became, in the words of Pedro Lain Entralgo,
24
II

”el signo y espejo de una generacién.

It ignored
characteristic lines of humor to cultivate an intemporal
and abstract satire destined, according to Lépez Rubio,
one of its later contributors, to destroy ”lo endeble, Io

”25 This destructive

caduco, lo polvoriento, lo corrumpido.
intention, however, was directed at Iampooning the trite
and stale commonplaces in human expressions, attitudes,

and reactions. It was definitely not a combative, caustic,
vituperative type of humor. Spain was convalescing from

a grievous civil war and Mihura’s journal would have

gained nothing by openly exploiting moral or political
issues.26 Mihura concentrated on nineteenth century set-
tings and an occasional satire of the l920’s, but couched
his treatment in a hazy intemporality which could situate

his humorous dialogues in our own day as well as in the

time they were written. The following complete playlet

 

24”El humor de La Codorniz,” La aventura de leer
(Madrid: Espasa-Calpa-AustraT, I946), p. T29.

 

25Cited in Acevedo, Teoria e interpretacién...,
p. 25l. -

26José MonIeOn writes that he encountered ”muchos
elementos positivos y hasta revolucionarios” in La
Codorniz of Mihura’s epoch, but by ”revolutionary" he is
referring to a systematic skepticism and prevailing doubt,
analogous to Jardiel’s sophisticated humor, rather than
to any hint of political undertones. See ”La critica
ante la obra de Miguel Mihura," Miguel Mihura: Teatro
(above, note l9), p. 53.

 

47

is an extreme example of Mihura's absurdist style in

La Codorniz, a highly deveIOped intellectual humor that
achieVes a sustained effect of incongruity by presenting
a series of unexpected replies in place of the antici—
pated clichés of everyday conversation. *It is particu-
larly interesting to note the date of this sketch (I942).

It anticipates by several years the French theater of the

absurd.

Ella Baila usted muy bien. aSe llama
usted por casualidad Vicente?

El Yo, no. éY usted?

Ella Yo, tampoco.

El iQué casualidad! iEncontrarse dos seres
en el mundo y que ninguno de los dos
se llame Vicente!

Ella Sique es casualidad.

El A mi es la primera vez que me pasa esto;
pero para cuatro dias que vive uno...

Ella éUsted no vive mas que cuatro dias?

El Segun; algunas veces, cinco.

Ella éEntonces no sabré usted lo que es un
domingo?

El Si, Io sé; pero nunca lo he visto. gEs
muy grande?

Ella Aproximadamente como el lunes, pero mas
alto. '

El iVaya con don Vicente!

Ella gPero qué don Vicente?

El gNo me ha dicho usted que se llama

Vicente?

48

Ella Si, pero muy poco.

El Cuando usted quiera dejamos de bailar,
porque hace ya mas de una semana que
no toca la musica.27 '

Many readers were outraged by dialogues of this
nature. Some objected to a definite spirit of iconoclasm
in the nonsensical retorts, though the only true debunk-
ing was limited to an exploitation of the tiresome plati-
tudes of common discourse. All in all, Mihura's articles
had a legion of enthusiastic and impassioned detractors
who harrassed him constantly. He finally became exas-
perated over the fierce polemics his administration in-
cited and eventually resigned in disgust, commenting
that "Ia lucha, la controversia y la popularidad no van
bien con mi carécter apacible, retraido y timido."28

La Codorniz resisted foreclosure by never in-
viting the disdain of Franco’s regime. Perhaps its ab-
stract formulas and disorbited humor, characterized
above all by a distancing from reality, accounts for the

magazine’s uninterrupted longevity.29 A good summation

of its intended inoffensive format under Mihura’s

 

—fi—

27La Codorniz, No. 45 (April l2, I942), l.
28Mihura, Obras, p. 36.

29The magazine nearly folded in I952 due to
excessive polemics, quarrels, and fines. Under Laigle-
sia’s direction (since I944) La Codorniz gradually adop-
ted a posture of contemporary social criticism. It
focused its humorous barbs on a world in decomposition,
a fact which irritated Mihura to the point of his writing
two published "Cartas polémicas" to Laiglesia to express
his discomfort and renounce his collaboration once and

49

editorship is found in the following statement its founder

wrote to define the purpose of La Codorniz. This state-

 

ment also provides a clear insight into Mihura’s philo-
sophy of life and will serve useful as we undertake to
analyze and understand his plays:

La Codorniz nacio para tener una actitud
sonriente ante la vida; para quitarle impor-
tancia a Ias cosas; para tomarle el pelo a
la gente que veia la vida demasiado en serio;
para acabar con los cascarrabias; para reirse
del tOpico y del lugar comun; para inventar
un mundo nuevo, irreal y fantastico y hacer
que la gente olvidase el mundo incOmodo y des-
agradable en que vivia.

 

La Codorniz is also relevant to Mihura’s later

 

theater in that it contains a source in embryo for one
of his major plays. Mihura calls it a ”cuento esceni-
ficado.” He first had it published in the pre-war

magazine Gutierrez, then rewrote it as ”Una corrida

 

intrascendente” for La Codorniz, finally expanding the

 

ten-minute playlet into a three-act play for the legi-

timate theater under the title El caso del sefior vestido

 

de violeta. This is another indication of the profound

influence Mihura’s early writings were to have on his

 

for all. Laiglesia’s realist tendency, explicitly sus-
tained at the present time, is a definite departure from
the so-called ”humor codornicesco" of Mihura's tenure, a
humor best defined as one of ”evasién de la realidad.
See Acevedo, Teoria e interpretacién..., pp. 247-256 and
Lain Entralgo, La aventura de leer, pp. l20-l33.

30Miguel Mihura, ”Primera carta a Alvaro de
Laiglesia,” reproduced in Mihura: Teatro, ed. Jose
Monleén (above, note [9), pp. ll7-Il9.

50

later creative activity for the theater. La Codorniz

 

provided a beneficial proving ground for the kind of out-
Iandishly bizarre humor Mihura later employed in the‘
avant-garde phase of his dramatic work.

We may conclude from the foregoing account of
Mihura’s early involvement in show business and journalism»
that his choice of career was a logical outgrowth of his
upbringing and was conditioned by his immediate environ-
ment. No single aspect of his vocational interests in
the field of histrionics, viewed in isolation, produced
Mihura the playwright. A complex of numerous activities
molded and motivated the poet within him to respond in
proportion to the opportunities he seized in his zealous

ambition to succeed.

II

An effort to define Mihura’s aesthetic principles
will enhance the reader’s appreciation for certain as-
pects peculiar to the playwright’s theater. Mihura, for
instance, since the production of Tres sombreros de copa,
has consistently maintained that he writes each play
geared to please the public’s taste and designed to suit

3|

the acting talents of a given actress. Knowing this

 

3lSee Ricardo Domenech, "Reflexiones sobre la

situacIOn del teatro,” Primer Actg, No. 42, I963, 7.

5|

readily explains his occasional adoption of conservative
precepts and answers as well for the obvious strength of
his leading feminine characters.

Mihura wrote his first four plays with a somewhat
carefree unconcern for public gusto, but after I952 he
adopted a different attitude. He thereafter willingly
made concessions to his audience, accomodating theme and
treatment for easy digestion. This posture has provoked
adverse criticism from those who would have Mihura remain
in the absurdist tradition of his earlier productions.
Domingo Pérez Minik, for example, has charged Mihura with
having deliberately prostituted dramatic art by a retro-
gression to formulas of a reactionary theater.32 Evaristo
Acevedo is likewise censurious of Mihura’s change in
attitude towards his art, objecting to what he considers
to be the author’s aesthetic desertion from pure humor
(”lo humoristico”) into common comedy (”lo cOmico”).33

The foregoing statements point out the fact that
Mihura’s position does not enjoy a unanimous endorsement
from the critics. Yet despite some objections to his work,

the author continues to insist upon writing only "para

complacer los deseos del publico y procurar que pasen bien

 

32"Itinerario patético de una generacién de drama-
turgos espafioles," Insula, Nos. 224-225 (July-August, I965),
3.

33”Miguel Mihura, el apOstata,” Teoria e inter-
pretacién..., pp. l07-ll0.

52

el rato, siempre que sea con dignidad y con decen-
34

cia."

Perhaps his most incisive remark in defense of
this attitude is the following statement Mihura made in
I957 for an article about himself, published in Primer
Acto:

Creo que el teatro es un espectaculo de

mayorias y que, de un modo 0 de otn; hay

que llegar a la mentalidad de todos los
publicos.... Escribo asi porque soy asi y
pienso asi. Y que no puedo escribir de otra
manera.

The creditable aspect of his position, aside
from arguing for the excellent literary quality of
Mihura’s works, is his conscious effort to vary cons-
tantly the technique and treatment of each play. The
idea of prescribing his style to mechanized guidelines
terrifies him: his greatest desire is to avoid being
categorized as a functionary of the theater.36

Lo que me gustaria era no tener ningun

estilo, y que cada obra mia fuese distinta
a las demés.

 

34Manuel Diez Crespo, Primer Acto, Nos. 29-30,
December I96l-January I962, p. 9.

35”El teatro de Mihura visto por Mihura,” Primer
Acto, No. 3, I957, l2.

36Mihura’s concept of dramatic humor indicates
his aversion to conforming to a stereotyped format.
Humor, he says, is not a literary formula, but rather a
way of being, a way of expressing oneself, a way of res-
ponding to life. See Primer Acto, No. 9 (July-August,
I959), 4-5.

37Ibld.

53

He premieres his plays infrequently, although he
spends no more than two to three months in writing
them.38 His estrenos may best be described as erratic
and unpredictable. Several seaapns may go by without
his name appearing on the billboards. There are also
times when he will feature three plays simultaneously.
Mihura generally shuns a constant productivity, however,
for, as he admitted to the critic Angel Laborda, a too
frequent appearance invites "muchos disgustos, muchas

”39 This was the case

desilusiones y muchos desencantos.
with his unusually prolific staging of three productions

during the l964-65 season, which left him satiated with

fatigue.4O

Mihura has found that his ideal program is to
begin writing a play in May, to rehearse the first act in
June, and to conclude the comedia by mid-summer, in time

4' He believes it

to have it premiered by September.
essential that he be the only person responsible for its

production; he therefore directs all of his own plays.

 

38Rafael Cotta Pinto, review of Mihura’s Mari-
bel..., in La Estafeta Literaria, No. I78 (October I,
I959), 24.

39Informaciones (Madrid), September 29, I959, p. 8.

 

40Information conveyed in personal interview,
June 9, I967.

4'Ibid.

54

Creo que jas obras Ias tiene que montar
el mismo autor. No debe haber interferencias.
De seguir estrenando, siempre montaré y
dirigiré yo personalmente Ias obras.

Miguel Mihura has delighted in cultivating the
image of a literary vagrant. He boasts Of being per-
renially lazy, obliged to regulate his life from one
siesta to the next.43 During an occasional burst of
energy, often occurring between five and eight in the
evening, he writes, corrects, and types his plays in the
comfort of his study. This labor, Mihura Says, is often
accompanied by a great yearning to go back to bed. "Yo
seria feliz si pudiera estar toda la vida acostado y
leyendo en la cama."44 Sheer boredom produced the three
plays he premiered dUring the l965-66 season.4S

Mihura recalls with pleasure the days when with
a group of friends he would write his plays in tertulias,

but he admits that his present-day habits require a tor-

turous labor of solitude. He attempts to enliven the

 

42a’COrdoba’, ”COrdoba interroga a Miguel Mihura,"
Pueblo (Madrid), April 4, I953, p. l5.

43In Brussels, the traditional rehearsal schedule
of ten in the morning had to be changed to one of late
afternoon in deference to Mihura’s mid-morning and noon-
day siest 5. See J. Aguirre Bellver, Madrid, Nov. 25,
l96l, p. .

44Rafael Cotta Pinto, loc. cit. (above, note 38).

45Angel Laborda, loc. cit. (above, note 39).

55

painful sessions of creativity by writing with multiple
colors on gigantic blocks of heavy folio paper that he
buys in Paris.46

Don Miguel is a confirmed bachelor. He lives a
quiet, sedate life, preferring ingrained habits over a
busy social climate that would disturb his personal
routine.47 Convinced that he himself cannot resolve the
problems and conflicts of the world, Mihura utilizes his
few waking hours each day in generating through drama the
laughter and smiles of human enjoyment.

Perhaps the best portrait of the man is the one
he himself wrote in the personality of Juan for his tenth
published play, Mi adorado Juan. Juan is more than a
mere literary representation of the author; he is the
Spiritual incorporation of his creator as well. He em-
bodies those attributes of demeanor, dress, and senti-
ment that have characterized the author’s public image
and self concept for many years. By quoting a few select
passages from Act One, we might approximate a fairly

accurate description of the dramatist Miguel Mihura:

El vive de cualquiera manera. No tiene
ambiciones ni necesidades. Su manjar pre-
ferido es el queso y duerme mucho.

 

46See José Montero Alonso, review of Mihura’s
Milagro... and La tetera, in Madrid, January 6, I965,
p.|.

 

47J. d’Etchevers remarks that Mihura even
"commande tous les jours les memes plats, depuis des
années." See "Mihura ou Ie triomphe de I’humour,”
La C6té Libre (Paris), November 23, I960.

56

A él le gusta trabajar para los demés,
pero sin sacar provecho de ello, sin que se
le note que trabaja. El dice que trabajar
mucho, como comer mucho, es una falta de
educacién.

Le fastidian Ias ceremonias y la for-
malidad.

El dinero y la fama le importan Un pimiento.
En todos sus movimientos y hasta en su
manera de hablar se ve que es esa clase de per—
sonas que han nacido ya un poco cansadas.
Having reviewed the early life and career of
Mihura, with a brief glance at his personal disposition

and the precepts he works by, we are prepared to under-

take an analysis and evaluation of his avant-garde plays.

 

48Mihura, Obras, pp. 629, 630, 633.

PART TWO

'A CRITICAL EVALUATION OF MIGUEL MIHURA’S
AVANT-GARDE PLAYS

CHAPTER THREE

A CIRCULAR TREATMENT OF BOREDOM: 3VIVA LO
IMPOSIBLE! O EL CONTABLE DE LAS ESTRELLAS

While residing in San Sebastian during the summer
of I939, Miguel Mihura befriended a number of aspiring
artists with whom he shared a fondness for the theater
and a special flair for humoristic invention. Among his
fellow contertulianos of the Café Raga were Antonio-de
Lara, nicknamed Tono, and Joaquin Calvo Sotelo. Collab-
orating with each, Mihura launched his career in drama-

turgy by writing two plays concurrently, iViva lo im-

 

ossible! with Calvo Sotelo and Ni pobre ni rico, sino
;
l

 

todo lo contrario with Tono. Seven years later Mihura

 

was to collaborate with a third member of the original
tertulia group, Alvaro de Laiglesia, in the writing of

his final play of joint authorship, El caso de la mujer

 

asesinadita.
Joaquin Calvo Sotelo’s theatrical career did not
begin with the estreno of iViva lo imposiblef. He had

produced his first play seven years earlier, a three

 

IMihura informs us that he wrote a large portion
of both plays within the Café Raga, where he literally
passed from table to table "colaborando en una con
Joaquin y en otra con Tono." See Obras, p. 25.

58

59

act comedy entitled A la tierra, 500.000 kilOmetros
(Barcelona, I932), premiered the same year in which

Mihura completed his writing of Tres sombreros de cop_.

 

Calvo Sotelo was a lawyer by training, but found
his practice tedious and unfulfilling. Like Mihura, his
venture into literature began with journalism, writing
humorous articles and short stories for major Spanish
newspapers. Before the outbreak of the Civil War, he

had premiered his second play, El rebelde (I934), in

 

Madrid. Five years later he staged La vida inmévil (I939)

 

in Valladolid, followed that same year by the more im-
portant ;Viva Io imposible! in Madrid’s Teatro Cémico.
When the latter play appeared, Calvo Sotelo was thirty-
five years old, Mihura ten years younger.’

iViva Io imposible! was written within one month’s
time and enjoyed a successful opening on the night of
November 24, I939. However, the late fall premiere was
ill-timed. Extreme cold weather combined with extensive
street construction on Preciados to militate against a
commercial success. The comedy folded after only thirty

performances, netting each writer l500 pesetas.2

 

. 2Mihura decided then and there to abandon the
theater. For the next four years he busied himself with
more lucrative projects.. Calvo Sotelo also turned else-
where for remunerative employment; he did not stage
another play until l945.

60

iViva Io imposiblef is a much better play than
the records and revenues may suggest. Due to its brief
engagement, the work has often been dismissed as a youth-
ful experiment unworthy of serious consideration. Some
critics are seemingly unaware of its very existence.3

In an article written for Hispania in I960, for instance,

 

Dr. Samuel A. Wolsy overlooks the play altogether in his
summary of Mihura’s early works.4 Gonzalo Torrente
Ballester likewise begins his discussion of Mihura’s
theater without reference to the author’s first play.5
The same critic omits mention of the title in his bib-
liographical listing of works by Mihura and by Calvo

sotelo.6

An analysis of the play’s internal structure and
content will make apparent that neither rejection nor ex-
clusion of the work would be justified in this study. We
will attempt to show wherein its literary substance vin-

dicates the commercial failure of I939.

 

3Perhaps the play has been unintentionally ignored
due to its exclusion from Mihura’s Obras completas (I962).
It was published in a separate authors’ editionfiqadrid,
l95l), now out of print. All page references to this play
are based on the original authors’ edition.

 

4Samuel A. Wolsy, "La calidad literaria del
teatro de Miguel Mihura," Hispania, XLIII (May, I960),
2'4-2|8I '

5Gonzalo Torrente BalleSter, "El teatro serio de
un humorista," in Miguel Mihura: Teatro, ed. José MonleOn
(Madrid: Taurus, I965), pp. 67-80.

6Panorama de la literatura espafiola contemporénea
(2nd ed.;—Madrid: Guadarrama, l96l), II, l053-I054.

6|

The play’s symmetrical construction prompts our
designating its overall structure by the term circular.
The work ends where it begins, in the midst of the bore-
dom, monotony, and frustration of a middle class Madri-
Ienian apartment. The first act is itself built upon a
symmetrical pattern, a construction formulated to inti-
mate the parting from ennui and the return to humdrumness
which culminates in Act Three.

The initial dialogue between two unseen neighbors,
chatting in an adjacent apartment flat, is repeated at
the close of the act. Likewise a trite popular tune,
whistled by another neighbor early in the play and re-
peated later by Eusebio, is reiterated with identical
banality as the curtain falls.

This device of unifying different episodes --
primarily the opening and closing scenes of a given act --
by the recurrence of familiar motifs, is found in several
of Mihura’s later plays. It is not a characteristic of
Calvo Sotelo’s theater.

In his subsequent plays, Mihura tends to favor
a circular repetition of instrumental music or song over
the reduplication of dialogue. As in ;Viva lo imposiblef,
we find that the whistling of a particular tune ties to-
gether two separate incidents in Una mujer cualquiera,
wherein the same melody Antonio has whistled in Act One,

is repeated by the maid in Act Two. A medley of foghorns

62

and dance tunes, combined with classical music from a

distant violin open and close Act Two of Mi adorado Juan.

 

Through the technical use of flashback in Carlota,
Mihura utilizes the actual piano playing on stage of a
waltz tune, which calls to the spectator’s mind the same
melody heard earlier in the first act. The waltz serves
to link a present affective state to the emotion which
the music evoked previously.

The bolero tune, ”Bésame mucho,” connects the
opening scene of Act One with the beginning of Act Two in

Melocotén en almibar. Act One of Maribel y la extrafia

 

familia commences with recorded rock-and-roll music and
ends with Beethoven, while a French song, ”Je suis seule

” is repeated in the first and last scenes of

ce soir,
Act One in El chalet de Madame Reynard. The same
accordeon music which ushers in the action of the two

Ninette plays is likewise heard as the curtain falls to

conclude their respective epilogJes. In La tetera each

 

act begins with the peeling of church bells and ends with
piano music.

To a lesser degree Mihura employs physical ob-
jects to enhance a balance between related stage actions.
The recurring appearance of top hats in all three acts of
Tres sombreros de copa offers one example. The gong in
Act One of Las entretenidas and the stuffed donkey in
A media luz los tres serve as additional illustrations

of Mihura’s management of stage properties to achieve a

63

sense of dramatic parallelism between different episodes
or scenes.

_The repeated dialogue and whistling in iViva Io
imposible! lend an equilibrium of tone to the seriousness
of purpose in this play, while binding the opening and
closing scenes of Act One with cyclical, balanced
structure, typical of Mihura’s style. By extension, Act
Three of iViva lo imposiblef resembles Act One; its em-
phatic and compelling mood of sobriety reaffirms the
thoughtful spirit of the first act, in contrast to the
intended lightness and frivolity of Act Two.

The prosaic whistled tune is more than a mere
melodic appendage intended to unify action. It also pro-
vides a kind of common cosmetic base to underscore the
portrayal of distressing sOCial conditions. Penetrating
through the thin walls, the whistling disturbs Eusebio,
who cynically observes that ”los pisos tan baratos tienen

7 an overt criticism of Madri-

Ios tabiques de papel,"
lenian apartment living. Eusebio then whistles the same
melody, only to do so slightly off tune, an action which
provides a thematic parallel to the sullen complaints

that common household fixtures are in disrepair and the
economy is unstable. Once he learns to whistle the tune

correctly, Eusebio’s attitude changes; he is more cheer-

ful, more hopeful. Indeed, this is the first hint of a

 

7;Viva lo imposiblez..., p. 9.

64

wistful yearning to be free from the monotony of change-
lessness, a desire later symbolized by his strange fancy
for an exotic gong.

Through Eusebio’s actions and dialogue, we be-
come aware that the first act of this play emphasizes
with little humor the rigidity and the inanity of a parti-
cular social milieu, namely a middle class existence in
the Spanish capital. Eusebio, discontented, irritable,
and indecisive, is the focal point of this treatment.
Oppressed with financial and vocational concerns, he
Ivoices complaints common to his generation. He is
troubled above all by the senseless requirements of his
studies, requirements which cause him to be delineated
as "fatigado," "sombrio," ”melancélico,” and "entriste-
cido,"8 resulting ultimately in the destruction of his
health and sanity.

The portrayal of Eusebio seems more indicative of
Calvo Sotelo’s authorship than Mihura’s. As we mentioned
previously, Calvo Sotelo had been a state lawyer for many
years. After passing the bar examinations, he pursued
his profession with interest and success, but gradually
grew disenchanted with the career and sought novelty and
excitement in the entertainment world. In Eusebio we

see reflected a negative attitude toward the law

 

81bid., pp. 7, 8, l4, l8.

65

profession; he voices an indictment against the problems
of entering such a career in present-day Spain: the
lengthy struggle, the keen competition, burdensome lucu-
bration, bureaucratic exigencies. His anxieties repre-
sent the oommon plight of all law students of his genera-
tion:
Vecino. Yo preparo también oposiciones,
amigo mio. ,Como usted; como los dos hermanos
del piso bajo; como los tres primos del entre-
3uelo. Toda la casa entera prepara Oposiciones,
senor. '
Eusebio. iMas aun! Como los cuatro amigos

de la casa de al lad); como los cinco condiscipulos

de la esquina; como los seis paisanos de enfirente.

iToda la calle prepara Oposiciones, sefior mio...!

Vecino. (Ya en el paroxismo) iiMés can::

iTodo el barrio! iToda la ciudad! iMadrid

entero prepara Oposiciones...!
The meaninglessness of his studies is made apparent as he
listlessly attempts to memorize an involved municipal law
dealing with state finances while the reality of acute
urban taxation afflicts the household with concern and
unrest. We have herein an illustration of dramatic irony
which, while it reinforces the impact of a marked social

tendency in the play, also takes precedence over secon-
dary comic meaning in dialogue or situation.

An additional example of irony in the first act
is Eusebio’s patching up a broken window pane with the
cover of one of his law books. This action suggests a

disparity between the promises of municipal law,

 

91bid., p. l3.

66

explicitly noted in the passage Eusebio reads aloud from
one of his texts, and urban fulfillment, typified by
frequent allusions to material privation, physical indOor
cold, mouse traps, and a meal consisting of beans.

In a brief exchange between Eusebio and another
law student, we encounter a striking reference to
socialistic dependency upon the state and its dJlling
effect on personal independence:

Vecino. ...gNo servimos para otra cosa los

espafioles? ,

Eusebio. Es verdad. gNo sabemos sino depender
del Estado? 'Del sueldo fijo?

Vecino. Enfebrecido). iYo tengo novia! Pero
mis padres no permiten que me case si no dispongo
de lo que ellos Ilaman ”una cosa segura".

Eusebio. (Con sarcasmo.) iSetenta duros cada
mes! ,

Vecino. (Epiléptico.) gDe qué sirve "una cosa
segura?" Acorcha, insensibiliza, nos cria callos
en los codos y el cerebro; nos hace rutinarios, nos
acorta Ias alas...

Eusebio. ...nos mutila tOdOS'lOS suefios, toda
la sed de aventuras y nos deja el alma exhausta,
hipotecada....l

This passage foreshadows the tone and substance of many
of Calvo Sotelo’s later plays. It parallels the impas-
sioned expression, the spirit of allegation, and the.
sense of displeasure toward vexing situations of the
present day world, all typical features of his future
productions. The content of Eusebio’s discoursing seems
to adhere closely to the settled convictions and social

polemics of the older playwright’s posture. Yet the

 

IOIbid., p. l4.

67

foregoing passage is by no means removed in spirit from

the earnest but genial affirmations of Miguel Mihura’s

position; his own future writings will repeatedly stress
the importance of securing a personal liberation from a
life of habit or artificial living.

Financial deprivation is the theme of Act One.
Many hints of economic problems and all that they lead
to, such as the neCessity of carrying two jobs, the'
struggle for promotion, and individual desperation ending
in suicide are made evident in its opening scenes. This
sustained preoccupation over material gain, together with
the aforementioned focus on the personal despair of
Eusebio, is strongly suggestive of Calvo Sotelo’s dominant
role in the writing of Act One of iViva lo imposible!

A blend of tenderness and humor prevents the play
from becoming a social documentary. Comic exaggeration
is employed to point out the absurdity of conforming to
the dehumanizing values of communal routine. The insur-
ance agent, for example, appeals to Eusebio’s desire to
emulate the same habit patterns which his neighbors mani-
fest in paying a higher premium each month for the
privilege of having two extra horses pull his funeral
wagon. Such fanciful and-extravagant touches of humor,
visible as well in the brief dance around Eusebio’s gong,
"con un aire de profunda alegria," have all the earmarks

of a Mihurian ambit of influence.

68

Palmira, Eusebio’s sister, represents a further
clue to Mihura’s role in coauthoring the work. Like the
majority of Mihura’s heroines, Palmira transcends a domain
of subservience and restraint by dint of personal verve
and the assertion of a lively will. Though she eventually
gives in to the prevailing system of values of which she
is a product, through her marriage to Vicente, neverthe-
less she overcomes in spirit a crass material conformity,
evidenced by her consciousness of having once eXperienced
a marvelous sense of immunity from social and moral duress.

Palmira’s marital resignation conforms to the
image which the Spanish woman of her day was expected to
maintain. Only in a much later play of another generation
does Mihura emancipate his heroine from the security and
conformity of a male-dominated world, through the person
of Florita of iSublime decisién! (I955). In Palmira we
find Florita’s forerdnner, hOwever, a woman unwilling to
judge an individual’s worth by his income. In repudiating
her suitor in Act One, she rejects temporarily a society
of stifling conventionality. Her escape from that mOno-
tony into the fervid activity of Act Two enlivens her
sensitivity for love and deepens her compassion for
human failings. Finally, her marriage to Vicente in Act
Three, thus completing her cycle of evasion from boredom
to her return to the same shallow existence, signifies
an acquiescence to the kind of world which cannot sustain

her dream for adventure and freedom. This willing

69

compliance to the dictates of a harsh and exacting society
betokens the moral import of the play. Mihura repeats
this message time and time again through the actions and
reactions of his female protagonists. I

Vicente is the arch-villain of the play. He is
portrayed as a hateful individual, present only in Acts
One and Three. He is foreign in character to the typical
gallery of dramatis personae in Mihura’s plays, who even
at their worst are capable of human compassion and ten—
derness. Vicente’s total absence from ACt Two, that
portion of the play which offers substantial evidence of
Mihura’s most direct and prevailing influenCe as coauthor,
suggests that this disreputable and calloused individual
foretokens more closely the typical malefactor of Calvo
'Sotelo’s later plays, rather than the more benign per-
petrators of evil in Mihura’s theater. Indeed, Vicente
totally lacks the capacity to dream. His values, couched
in routine and regulated labor, reveal a most uninspiring
example of secure mediocrity. In bearing and attitude,
he resembles the kind of selfish, materialistic forces
which oppose Jorge Hontanar in Calvo Sotelo’s stage
_masterpiece, La muralla (I954), or the rancor of Dalmiro
Quintana in the same author’s Historia de un resentido
(I956). A

While money and security represent the substance

of Vicente’s life, the antipodal position -- fantasy and

7O

idealism -- is maintained by Don Sabino, the only
character capable of making a complete break fromthe
oppressive dictates of a traditional milieu. His re-
volt is instantaneous and alarming, motivated by a pro-
found odium for the arid monotony of his existence, the
common existence of the average middle class Spaniard:
Que rompamos con todo. Que abandonemos nuestros
puestos...;Y que nos echemos a volar!...;Abajo
la norma, la medida, lo previstof...iViva lo.im:
possble, lo sofiado, lo utopico.
Don Sabino's new creed is a declaration of emancipation
from drudgery. It is sufficiently insurgent in spirit to
have caused this play to be deleted from Mihura’s pub- ‘
lished works.'2
The presentation of Don Sabino isga typical
example of Mihura’s benign character portrayals.' More-
over, Sabino’s first appearance on stage corresponds to
a dramatic manner which is undeniably Mihurian. When
Sabino enters the apartment in Act One, his mien and
language are the complete opposite of that which the
audience and the other characters anticipated. ThlS'
device of surprise is frequently employed by Mihura in
several of his most successful plays.. It functions to

startle the spectator momentarily and, more important,

it contributes to the complex of ironic contrasts which

 

"Ibid., pp. 26-27.

l2Information conveyed by the playwright in a
personal interview, December, l964.

7|

underlie dramatic action and constitute a fundamental
aspect of plot development in his theater.

Among the salient examples of unlooked-for traits
in the emergence of important characters, one might cite
the presentation of Abelardo and his lover Margarita in
Ni_pobre ni rico,_sino todo lo contrario and the first
appearance of Maribel in Maribel y la extrafia familia,
whom we expect to see as a sweet, demure, innocent
creature, but whose appearance, language, and dress leave
no doubt about her profession.

In connection with Mihura’s tendency to divert the
spectator’s attention from discovering the true nature of
a protagonist’s character, we also find unanticipated
reversals in the plot line. The most significant reversal

in ;Viva lo imposible! is the revelation in Act Two that

 

futility climaxes an act of carefree liberation. The
outcome we expect to witness -- life renewed and values
reinstated -- is totally reversed. The upshot of the
change in milieux, from sordid triviality in Madrid to
an exciting circus life in the province, is that the
family members have merely embraced a romanticized form
of the same kind of life they had abandoned, just as
meaningless and absurd as their Madrilenian existence.
Beneath the apparent gaity of Act Two we sense the
gradual emergence of this bitter truth: the assumption
of a new role in life cannot change the basic configu-

ration of a man’s life. Mihura and Calvo Sotelo convey

72

the idea that man, being a social creature, is thoroughly
a product of the mores and dictates of his society.

Don Sabino's theme -- the revolt against material
and spiritual impoverishment -- is represented symboli-
cally by occasional allusions to heavenly stars and by
more frequent references to the sea. The play’s sub-
title, for instance, is based on an element of sustained
stellar imagery. Stars attract Palmira, symbolizing her
sought-after freedom. The firmament, endless and im-
measurable, likewise represents "lo imposible, lo sofiado”
in the spirited imagination of Don Sabino. To the un-

”el

imaginative eyes of Vicente, however, Sabino becomes
contador de las estrellas, ... un contable de lo que no
se puede contabilizar: de las gotas del agua del mar, de
las estrellas del cielo."I3 The charge is unwarranted,
for Sabino learns to temper the impossible ideal (i.e.
to become a renowned performing artist) by incorporating
his know-how of accounting, that is, the experience of
his former business acumen, within the framework of an
emancipated life (i.e. the circus). He cannot count the

stars, but he insists upon being able to see them. The

retention of the ideal, meaningfully integrated with an

endeavor to live realistically, is fundamental to the

philosophy of Miguel Mihura’s major dramatic works.

 

'33Vivg_lo imposiblef..., p. 93.

73

Concerning a more obvious and thematically more
important use of imagery in the play, we turn now to
examine Palmira and Sabino’s special sensitivity towards
the distant sea, a symbol of their coveted freedom and-
happiness. Palmira yearns for a view of the ocean, an
unfulfilled dream she has cherished all of her life:
"aCuénto tiempo hace que sofiamos con ver el mar? Ya
verés: envejeceremos sin ver el mar.”'4 Don Sabino
sympathizes with her desire: ”Me inspiras pena, Palmira,

"'5 His sudden decision for

sofiando con ver el mar.
liberation is accompanied by a promise to fulfill her
dream: ”Mafiana, al despertaros, abriréis los ojos y
veréis una pradera de un azul movible, salpicado de espu-
mas blancas...Seré el mar, Palmira, seré el mar...."'6
In breaking her engagement with Vicente, Palmira
recnounces the kind of petty and pitiful life he promises

her. "Yo voy hacia el mar,”

she declares,'7 a notion
which Vicente, in his stubborn concern for materialistic
comfort, cannot fathom. Nor can Eusebio fully understand
the nature of this revolt, though he himself yearns to

own a large, exotic gong, a further symbolic representa-

tion of hunger for personal liberation from prosaic

routine.

 

'4Ibid., p. l6. '5Ibid., p. 27.
'6Ibid., p. 28. '7Ibid., p. 34.

74

The difference between the sea and the gong as
parallel images is apparent when we note the future ful-
fillment of each respective quest. When Eusebio obtains

his gong, he strikes it with one fierce blow, prompting

Sabino to remark:

iEste gong esté estropeadof... Lo haces
sonar, y no vienen bayaderas, ni soldados con
lanzas, ni esclavos con turbantes, ni negros
de ébano. Todo el mundo fantéstico que des-
piertan los gongs, cuando funcionan bien.
The gong thus symbolizes an incomplete and purposeless
dream leading, even upon attainment, to confusion and
frustration. Such is the result as well of Eusebio's
pursuit for success in the law profession.

In contrast, long after Palmira’s one-day view of
the sea has passed, her own-fulfilled dream continues to
provide a meaningful sense of exhilaration, as typified

' I
in her statement: ";Cuando nos fuimos de Madrid, lo pri-
mero...a ver el mar! iQué alegria!"I9 She is likewise
capable of nostalgically reliving her circus adventure ten
years after its conclusion -- "No era feo vivir tan loca-

"20 -- at a time when Eusebio has already been com-

mente
mitted to an asylum for having allowed his professional
ambitions to impair his sanity. Eusebio’s preference for

a chromolithograph of the sea over a view of the real

 

'8Ibid., p. 24.

lglbid., p. 5|.
20.1.913- . p. 84-

75

ocean suggests his incapacity for converting mere
chimerical escapism into a promising ideal. The sea for
Eusebio is nothing more than its depiction on the living
room wall, while for Palmira it signifies dynamic action,
the possibility of gaining the social redemption Sabino
has promised her.

In several of his later plays, Mihura again
repeats sea imagery as a motif relevant to dramatic
action and meaning. In Tres sombreros de copa, for
instance, it symbolizes happiness in varying degrees.
With seraphic innocence, Don Rosario views the sea as a
decorative object, its adorning features more visible to
the old man’s imagination than to his weak vision. For
Don Rosario the sea represents a tourist attraction, an
item worth mentioning to enhance the merits of his hotel
for prospective tenants. For fifteen years he has lauded
the sea and the port as appendages to the balcony room,
thus imbuing his tenants with a sense of oneness with
nature and the immediacy of physical comfort:

El balcon da al mar. Y la vista es hermosa.
Ahora no se ve bien porque es de noche. Pero,
sin embargo, mire usted alli Ias lucecitas de

las farolas del puerto. Hace un efecto muy
lindb. Todo el mundo lo dice."2|

For Rosario the sea exists as a vision of hope,
its reality governed by the pleasure it communicates,

its value sustained by the power of the viewer’s

 

Z'Mihura, Obras, pp. 47-48.

76

imagination. Mihura utilizes this nocturnal vision of
the sea, apprehended primarily within the world of
Rosario's unsophisticated mind, as a means of trans--
figuring the spectator into a dimension bordering on
magic and fantasy. This effect is fostered through the
dialogues between Dionisio and Paula, for whom the sea
and its landscape constitute an extension of their own
poetic dimension of happiness, in a world they have
fashioned together within the hotel room, animated by
light, color, music, dancing, and farce.

Rosario’s appreciation for the sea as a mere
adornment is first adopted by the impressionable Dionisio,

for whom the "tres lucecitas" of the port constitute una

vista magnifica."22 He gradually disregards this bor-
rowed notion, replacing it in time with the cheerful and
optimistic meaning which the sea represents for Paula,
enunciated on two occasions in Act Two:

Iremos a la playa...junto al mar....Com-
praremos cangrejos....Los comeremos alli,
sobre la arena...con el mar enfrente.

iMafiana iremos a la playa a comer can-
grejos! Y pasado mafiana tu te levantarés
temprano y yo también... Nos citaremos abajo
y nos iremos en seguida al puerto y alquilaremos
una barca... ;Una barca sin barquero! Y nos
llevamos el bafiador y nos bgfiamos lejos de la
playa, donde no haya pie... 3

 

221bid., p. 6|.
23Ibid., pp. 88, 90.

77

The sea means for Paula what in ;Viva lo imposible:

 

it represents for Palmira -- a dream, a fancy, an escape.
But with the coming of dawn and the gradual extinguishing
Of the port lights, illusion is replaced by an awareness-
of reality, indicated by Paula’s crestfallen attitude as
she stands at the balcony facing the sea and says, "Y
hace frio."24
For the protagonist of Tres sombreros de copa,
the sea is a promise unrealized. Upon leaving his hotel
room to comply perfunctorily with his commitment to marry
Margarita, Dionisio forfeits the happiness the sea re-
presents. Dionisio gives in to an existence of melan-
choly, intolerance, stupidity, and heartlessness. His
decision parallels that of Palmira’s marriage to Vicente,
or her return to monotony, in Act Three of iViva lo
imposible! She too renounces the promise of adventure
which the sea had symbolized for her. In contrast, the
optimistic vaudeville characters of Tres sombreros de
‘gggg, namely Sagra, El Guapo Muchacho, El Roméntico
Enamorado, and El Alegre Explorador, go out at daybreak
to encounter the sea, signifying a perpetuation of their
authentic well-being. Their Chekce parallels Don

Sabino's final return to circus management, yearning to

see new lands beyond the seas.

 

24Ihid., p. 101.

78

Sea imagery also appears throughout a great part
of Mi adorado Juan, but unlike Tres sombreros de cope,
wherein the sea is evokedimaginatively, in Mihura’st
eleventh play the ocean symbolism invigorates the plot
with the clamor and din of vital proximity to stage action.
Juan's apartment, for example, faces the port; fog horns,
crane work, and sundry dock noises pour into his living
room constantly, a room replete with nautical objects and
paintings. I

For Juan the sea is a source of serenity; he com-
pares its goodness to sunlight and a piece of cheese.
Fishing on the high seas is his favorite pasttime.i The
constant tumult from the dock is equated with security
and contentment in Juan's neighborhood. In contrast, the
easy comforts of Irene's milieu are for Juan a source of
despair. He eventually persuades her to repudiate the
debilitating world of ease and pretense in order to adopt
his way of life: "...gNo te parece que es bonito pensar
alguna vez cosas fantésticas, y hacer proyectos raros, y
echarle a la vida un poquito de imaginacién?"25

One of Mihura’s most graphic images concerning
the sea is found in Mi_gdorado Juan; he here emphasizes

the need to incorporate the traits of human kindness

within a society which subsists on chronic routine:

 

2516id., p. 695.

79

gUsted ha sido naufrago en alguna ocasion?...
.Porque si usted hubiera sido un naufrago, y se
hubiese encontrado solo, en una balsa, en medio
del mar, hubiera dado la vida entera por trope-
zar con un amigo... Y me levanto todas las
mafianas pensando que soy un naufrago... Y busco
amigos y los encuentro..2%asi todos, en esta
ciudad, son amigos mios.

Both of the above quotations disclose the same

theme dramatized in iViva lo imposible! and Tres som-

 

breros de copa; the three plays we have mentioned in
connection with sea imagery present a confrontation bet-
ween two different environments, a conflict based on
individual love and social allegiance, and the eventual
resignation or triumph of the featured protagonist in a
struggle to resist the devitalizing influence of a
prosaic and commonplace world.

Whereas the sea in Tres sombreros de copa, Mi
adorado Juan, and ;Viva lo imposiblei symbolizes varying
facets of happiness, representing a poetic image in
juxtaposition to the notion of orthodox addiction to
habit (or the alternative of happiness), the imagery
recurs in La bella Dorotea to represent solitude. First
mentioned in connection with Dorotea’s loneliness, the
sea becomes a reflexion of the protagonist's emotional
situation. In the reality of the solitary boat dis-.
appearing on the horizon, Dorotea sees the symbolic port-
rayal of her profound loneliness. The sea thus under-

scores the enormity of a human feeling.

 

2616id., p. 637.

80

When Dorotea’s isolation is surmounted, the sea
no longer functions to intensify her affective state, but
rather becomes the symbol of her prospective happiness,
thus corresponding to the same meaning behind this meta-
phor commonly evoked in the earlier plays. Even the ab-
rupt downpour from a northern sea tempest cannot diminish
Dorotea's euphoric joy in the final scene, wherein is
represented the kind of denouement reminiscent of the
reconciliation scene in Mi adorado Juan and typical of
Mihurian drama in general.

We conclude from the foregoing illustrations
that Mihura’s use of sea imagery, related to charac-
terization through metaphor and integrated with plot
action by its presence as a part of the stage setting,
is a conscious thematic motif. It has relevance to his
theater beyond its symbolic function in iViva lo

imposiblef

 

One of the most interesting similarities to be
found in Mihura's writings is the thematic parallel bet-
ween the second act of iViva lo imposible! and Act Two
of Tres sombreros de copa. These similarities will be
best appreciated if we keep in mind the historical rela-
tionship between the two plays.

Insofar as chronology of composition is con-
cerned, iViva lo imposible! follows by seven years the
writing of Tres sombreros de cgpa; we may thus say it is

reminiscent of the former play. However, Tres sombreros

8|

de copa had been shelved away, unstaged, unpublished, and
totally unknown to anyone outside of a few of Mihura’s
intimate acquaintances and a handful of skeptical pro-
moters, unwilling to risk their money and reputation on
such a bizarre work of art.27 Consequently, it might also
be stated, considering the chronological sequence of
premieres, that ;Viva Io imposiblef offers a lively inti-
mation of what the general public would see in the I952
estreno of Tres sombreros de copa. Adhering to this
second chronology, inasmuch as the play which is first
staged beccmes the public's domain and all ensuing pro-
dUCCiJflS are compared to the earlier one, we will procede
to enumerate the similarities between the two comedias.

A colorful circus atmosphere in iViva lo imposiblef,

 

involving the unusual appearance in dress and conduct of a
curious group of performers, is a foretaste and parallel
to the second act of Mihura’s most famous play. Indeed,

a good part of the charm of both plays may be attributed
to the Mihurian circus flavor contained therein. Like
Benavente before him, Mihura also discovered the dramatic
possibilities inherent in the spectacle of the circus or

the music hall. The choice was most appropriate, for

 

27Obras, pp. 30-33.

82

Spain was reputedly the circus capital of Europe from
I920 to I956.28

Another parallel is the unrealized love affair
between Palmira and Fede as a presage to a comparable
involvement between Paula y Dionisio. Fede's preoccupa-
tion over financial security, while serving as a thematic
parallel to Vicente's own concern for material comfort
in the same play, also tokens the kind of life and atti-
tudes Don Sacramento and his family represent in Ines
sombreros de cgpa. Eusebio's weak and contradictory
nature, which surprisingly assumes in Act Two the
appearance of solid resolution, only to degenerate in
Act Three to a regrettable state of renunciation and
defeat, resembles the vacillating, weak-willed Dionisio,
who voluntarily submits to a life of inevitable vulgarity
in leaving Paula to marry Margarita. The focal point of
the two plays is identical at this juncture; a confron-
tation between two contrasting milieux dominates both
plots and constitutes the basic idea behind each comedia.
On the one side we have a narrow-minded, habituary exis-
tence (Vicente = Don Sacramento); on the other, a free,

artistic way of life (Sabino é Paula).

 

28J. Lozano, "iEl circof Historia, andanzas y
aventuras," Teatro, XIX (May-August, l956), 29-33, 73.
See also Alfredo Marquerie, "El circo y su festival
mundial en Espafia," Teatro, XXI (January-March, l957),
26-27.

83

Just as Palmira and Fede represent two entirely
different worlds in ;Viva lo imposiblei, so Paula and
Dionisio are contrasted by their respective backgrounds.

Virtually all the characters on iViva lo imposible! are

 

trying to flee from an enfeebling ennui; they enter a
brief but falsified replica of their dreams, analogous
to Dionisio’s attempt to gain freedom from a life without
color or promise. Palmira is torn between two men,.
Dionisio between two women. Vicente accuses Don Sabino
of being a bohemian, as does Don Sacramento accuse
Dionisio.

Perhaps the most impressive similarity is found
in Palmira’s symbolic releasing of the dove at the close

of Act Two of iViva lo imposiblef, a gesture which signi-

 

fies her personal resolve to forsake the quest, abandon
the circus, and return to a life of domestic monotony.
This action can be compared to the dramatic toss of three
top hats at the end of Tres sombreros de copa, a symbol
of Paula’s resistance to self-pity and her resolve to
return to her former way of life, unfettered by senti-
mental, emotional ties.

The fact that multiple similarities between the
two plays can be cited lends credence to two suppositions.
First, Mihura’s collaboration with Calvo Sotelo was more
than incidental. Mihura’s influence -- through style,

subject matter, treatment, and humor -- predominates

84

virtually all of Act Two. Second, the fact that Mihura
had written but had not been able to produce 132;
sombreros de copa may have tempted him to incorporate
parallel elements from the manuscript of his I932 compo-
sition into the later production, assured a professional
staging owing to Calvo Sotelo’s established reputation

in playwriting. Mihura was in fact sorely disenchanted
by the extreme wariness shown by various promoters con-
cerning Tres sombreros de copa; his personal writings con-
vey a sense of apprehension over the ultimate destiny of
his silenced work.29 Perhaps he took advantage in col-
laborating with Calvo Sotelo to salvage some of the out-
standing features of his former play, allowing the circus
episode of Chapter Two of-;Viva lo imposiblef to become a
literary counterpart to the music hall proceedings of
Tres sombreros de copa.

Above all, the underlying message of the play,
echoed and re-echoed in each of the three acts, but
dramatized most poignantly by the elements of contrast,
humor, and surprise in Act Two, is typically Mihurian;
it inaugurates the kind of philosophical posture he will
assume in his subsequent productions, namely, that life
is incomplete without a capacity for adventure and an
individual exertion to realize one's dreams. This

thought is expressly developed through the discourse and

 

2C‘iObras, pp. 30-3l.

85

actions of Don Sabino, who states on two occasions the

unmistakable moral lesson of iViva lo imposiblefz ”No

 

llegar no es pecado. No partir, si.... La felicidad
esta unicamente en ser lo que se ha querido ser.”3O
An interesting stylistic phenomenon appears
throughout iViva lo imposiblef and often reappears in
subsequent plays by both Mihura and Calvo Sotelo, most
notably and to a greater degree in Mihura’s writings.
This is the tendency to construct dialogue and stage
directions by a syntactical arrangement by threes of
either nouns, adjectives, or verbs. For example, a

triplicity of nouns or adjectives is most apparent in

iViva lo imposiblef:

 

Me harta su bondad, su equilibrio, su serie-
dad.

Luce un gabén, baston, y bombin; ’

Esta existencia de monotona, de érida, de
triste.

Odio mis manguitos, mi mesa de trabajo,
mis formulas de siempre.

Le falta capacidad de ilusion, arranque,
juventud.

Me llenabas de alearia, de confianza, de
seguridad en mi mismo. '

Trinomial expressions are occasionally used in
the play as well. Echoed by several persons, they are
faintly reminiscent of a choral repetition in ancient

drama:

 

3OiViva lo imposible!..., pp. 93, 95.
3|Ibid., pp. 21-22, 26, 31-32.

86

Sabino. iAbajo la norma, la medida, lo
previstof
‘ Palmira y Eusebio. iAbajo la norma, la
medida, lo previstof
Sabino. ;Viva lo imposible, lo sofiado, lo

utopico!

Los dos. ;Viva lo imposible, lo sofiado, lo
utopicof

Sabino. iDistraeros queremosf

Todos. iDistraeros queremosf

Sabino. ;Y si no lo logramos...f

Todos. ;Y si no lo logramos...f

Sabino. 3L0 lamentaremos...532

Todos. ;Lo lamentaremos...f

In addition to its tripartite phraseology, the
play is also replete with trios of material objects and
references to the number three. For example, Sabino
deliberately breaks three glasses and smashes three win-
dow panes as a sign of his revolt. Mention is made to
three newspapers, three tickets, and Vicente's antici-
pated promotion within three years. Moreover, the three
main characters -- Sabino, Palmira, and Eusebio -- are
involved in constant interaction and share a kind of
combined role as protagonist.

This frequency of accumulation or series of
three words appearing in key passages is noteworthy be-
cause the same pattern recurs in the majority of Mihura’s
later plays. Whether or not this is a conscious rhetori-

cal device is inconsequential; we can affirm, however,

that the formula of trinal accumulation tends to heighten

 

321bid., pp. 27, 49.

87

and dignify the tone of a dramatic situation. Simple
discourse gains an oratorical vigor. Prosaic speech
is garnished with poetic flavor. Occasionally the
accumulation has an ascendent intensity; most often it
is a simple combination of synonyms or related terms,
more common to serious rather than humorous scenes.
Several striking examples of Mihura's stylistic
penchant for adjectival assemblage can be found in the
play El caso de la sefiora estupenda, wherein Carlos is
described as ”elegante, simpético y correcto;” Alejandro

II

as "tierno, heroico, generoso; and Susana depicted in

three sets of descriptions as ”monilla, timida y un poco

tonta;” ”lista, inteligente y bondadosa;"

and ”dulce,
apasionada y honesta.”33 ‘There are five other groupings
of trinomial modifiers in the same play.

Mi adorado Juan, which contains some twenty-

 

eight different sets of three-parted expressions, spe-
cializes in the accumulation of nouns and verbs, as
illustrated by these selected quotations:

Ni tengo radio, ni tengo alfombras, ni
tengo nada.

No compraré ninguna nevera, ni ninguna
plancha eléctrica, ni ninguna vajilla a
plazos. . .

Juan puede ser un estafador, un evadido
de presidio, un peligroso criminal.

Si yo trabajase y fuera ambicioso y
llegara a ser algo, no tendria apenas amigos.

 

33Ibid., pp. 6|, 77, 266, 277.

88

Siento la satisfaccion enorme de quedarme,
de no moverme, de estarme quieto en donde naci.

a...no te parece que es bonito pensar al-
guna vez cosas fantésticas, y hacer proyectos
raror, y echarle a la vida un quuito de ima-
ginacion?34

A good part of what the critics refer to as ”atmosfera
poética”35 and "cargado lirismo"36 in this and other
Mihurian plays might to a large extent be the result of
the author's rhetorical concern with triplication, a

phenomenon which also appears more than twelve times in

each of the following works: Melocoton en almibar, Una

 

mujer cualquiera, and A media luz los tres.

 

 

While not wholly immune to this device, Calvo
Sotelo does not utilize it to the same degree nor with the
same stylized elegance as_does Mihura. He appears to
favor triplication in his early comedias (e.g. Criminal

de guerra, l95l); it is less apparent in his later dramas

 

(e.g. La herencia, l957).

 

We have attempted to demonstrate in the fore-
going analysis of iViva lo imposible! that Mihura's first
play was intellectual and literary in scope and spirit.
The gaiety of tone and the winsome humor in Act Two are

particularly ascribable to him, while the more somber

 

34Mihura, Obras,'pp. 637, 642, 657, 660-66l, 695.

35Adolfo Prego, review of Mi adorado Juan in
Informaciones (Mardid), January l2, l956, p. l0.

36Alfredo Marquerie, review of Mi adorado Juan
in ABC (Madrid), January l2, I956, p. 45.

89

social undertones of Acts One and Three resemble the
moral pronouncements of Calvo Sotelo’s theater. The play
expresses the spiritual constriction of man in a society
that disapproves of the human necessity for change, in
this case an old man’s spontaneous rebellion against
stagnation and his difficulty in communicating to others
their need to spurn the dulling effects of perpetual bore-
dom. By returning the spectator in Act Three to the same
inanity portrayed ten years earlier in Act One, the play-
wrights make manifest the sad results of blind conformity
to the tedium of everyday activities. Devoid of the sus-
taining force of imagination and decisive action, this
conformity produces unremitting frustration and triteness

37 Sabino alone trans-

in the lives of many human beings.
cends the debilitating forces of habit; significantly he
does so on a New Year's Eve, taking his grandson (el Nifio)
with him, thus signifying that the individual struggle

of a former generation bestows the hope and promise for
emancipation upon a future age. The problem is treated

seriously. The dialogue is consistent with characteriza-

tion. The plot line is clear and logical. The play con-

veys a pertinent message which, while applying no doubt

to post-war Spain, is nonetheless free from topical or

 

37This same circular treatment, broadened to en-
compass thirty years and several family units, is forcibly
drawn by Antonio Buero Vallejo in his well-known Histor|a
de una escalera (I949).

90

regionalistic expressions; it has a vitality and uni-
versality typically Mihurian. 3Viva lo imposible!
warrants serious respect as the first play of a young,

promising dramatist.

CHAPTER FOUR

A VENTURE INTO THE ABSURD: NI POBRE
NI RICO,_SINO TODO LO CONTRARIO

Mihura was keenly sensitive to the failure of his

first stage production. When ;Viva lo imposiblef closed

 

in mid-December of I939, he was disposed to quit the
theater. He turned to the writing of short stories and
humorous articles and drew sketches for Spanish periodi-
cals. Moreoever, he was gratified to obtain a good in-
come as a script writer for Spanish films.

Meanwhile, it was with no small reluctance that he
completed writing the third act to a play which he and
Antonio de Lara (Tone) had begun in the summer of I939,

during the same months, it will be remembered, in which

 

he wrote iViva lo imposible! with Calvo Sotelo. Upon the
play’s completion, the authors decided to sell it to an
international film producer by the name of Benito Perojo,
who intended to convert Ni pobre ni rice, sino todo lo

contrario into a movie in Argentina.v When, after four

 

years of waiting, the movie had not yet appeared, Tono

insisted that the new play be recalled, inasmuch as its

 

'Mihura, Obras, p. 34.

9|

92

humor seemed all the more current and promised to bring
about an enormous commercial success. The popular maga-
zine, La Codorniz, had appeared in l94l, creating a pro-
pitious climate for the disorbited humor of the unproduced
play.

Mihura cared nothing for the work. He feared
that its revival might damage his and Tono’s reputation
in their journalistic career. To some extent he was
right. While the repurchasing of the play ultimately
brought fame to both playwrights, the immediate conse-
quences of this action were most unpleasant.

In the first place, Mihura’s reluctance to stage
the play engendered a breach with Tono. Their mutual en-
mity, exploited and exaggerated by the press, lasted
throughout the play's rehearsals, its subsequent per-
formances, and for several ensuing years.

Secondly, the play itself fomented a controversy
of unusual magnitude. On the one hand spectators either
stamped their feet indignantly or gave the disquieting
comedia a standing ovation. On the other hand, critical
acclaim was either laudatory to the extreme, or of
damning rejection. One critic, for example, extolled
the production in the beatific words: ”Pude apreciar

como la voz puede subir pluma a pluma desde las cuerdas

‘

2Mihura, Obras, pp. 35-36.

 

 

 

93

del arpa hasta el cielo...."3 In contrast, Emilio
Morales de Acevedo was quoted as having disdained the
work with a shrug and the comment: ”No he vivido bastante
para comprender esto."4

Mihura explains in his lengthy Introduccion a

 

Tres sombreros de copa that the polemics became distres—
singly vehement dnj divided public sentiment into two
camps: those who favored the humorous absurdities of
La Codorniz, of which Mihura was then editor, and those
who repudiated the magazine as the project of a madman.5
Both schools of thought troubled Mihura, who disliked

seeing the play linked to the familiar humor codornicesco,

 

which in reality had appeared two full years after the
writing of his and Tono’s comedy.

The notoriety which the play received did not
prevent its being a smashing box-office failure. It
failed both in Madrid and in Barcelona. The drama critic
Torrente Ballester points out that during the time in
which Ni pobre ni rico_and El caso de la mujer asesina-
.tha were premiered, the Teatro Maria Guerrero, where
the two plays were first staged, was a theater which

catered to authors whose plays had been rejected by

 

3Manuel Diez Crespo, review in Arriba (Madrid),
December l8, I943, p. 4.

4M. Sanchez Camargo, review in El Alcazar (Madrid),
December l8, I943, p. 2.

5Mihura, Obras, pp. 36-38.

94

promoters, and therefore a price of admission was in-
frequently exacted from the public. Torrente states:
Aquellas comedias excepcionales no fueron

del todo comprendidas. La gente no se fijaba

mas que en el extrafio humor con que estaban es-

critas, y lo mismo que se irritaban con La

Codorniz, se irritaban con el dialogo... de esas

dos comedias.
Evaristo Acevedo agrees with this viewpoint and adds that
the abstract humor of Mihura and Tono’s writings did not
gain entry into the psychology of their spectators,
”quienes preferian el humor concreto y critico que prac-
ticaban otros humoristas."7

Mihura, chagrined by the publicity given to his

quarrel with Tone, distressed over the hapless com-
mercial fiasco of their play, and perturbed at the ap-
parent lack of objectivity and understanding accorded
his novel and revolutionary brand of humor, abandoned the
theater for a second time. In Barcelona, where Ni pobre
ni rice was poorly received, Mihura was asked the fol-
lowing questions in a newspaper interview. The play-
wright's replies are most significant, for they repre-
sent his first declaration of divorce from an avant-

garde posture in the theater:

---5Esté usted satisfecho de Nigpobre ni
rico?

— w

6Gonzalo Torrente Ballester, ”El teatro serio de
un humorista,” in J. Rof Carballo et al., El teatro de
_bumor en Espafia (Madrid: Editora Nacional, I966), p. 220.

7Teoria e interpretacion del humor espafiol
(Madrid: Editora Nacional, I966) p. 250.

95

---No. Considero que esta obra ha sido solo
un experimento, y que esta clase de teatro ha
terminado con este ensayo. Yo, por lo menos,
no pienso escribir otra obra de este tipo.

---Pero éseguiré usted escribiendo comedias?

---De momento, no. Esperaré a que pase la
popularidad y la moda de este humor, y la
controversia que Ni pobre ni rico ha promo-
vido, para que asi la gente pueda ir a ver

mi otra comedia sin ninguna pasion y sin pre-
juicios de ninguna clase. Ademés, tanto los
que combaten como los que defienden La Codorniz
esperarian de mi otra obra de este estilo, y
yo pienso escribir una cosa completamente
diferente, para que el publico se quede aun
mas despistado de lo que se ha quedado ahora.

 

 

8

Mihura’s disappointment was due largely to the
financial setback resulting from the rejection of his
first two plays. A mild note of cynicism, coupled with
an apparent sense of insecurity and defensiveness, at-
tend other comments he made in interviews recorded prior

to the estreno of his first successful play, Tres som-

 

breros de copa. His prose writings of this early period,

particularly the aforecited Introduccion a Tres sombreros

 

de copa (I943) and Mis memorias (I943-44), are also

 

flavored with a cynical wit that does not conceal a
defensive attitude toward unfavorable criticism from
critics, promoters, and the general public. The under-
lying source for Mihura's tempered pessimism may likely
be attributed to the unprosperous returns for his efforts.

He frankly admits that the financial remuneration he

 

8Mihura, Obras, p. 37.

96

later obtained, following the extraordinary success of
Tres sombreros de copa, prompted his decision to remain
in dramaturgy.

Mihura came to realize that his financial security
as a professional playwright in Spain would be a tenuous
commodity unless he made concessions to the tastes and
demands of his promoters and public. In the opinion of
many reputable drama critics, who have declared Mihura’s
avant-garde period to be his best theater, this was an
unfortunate decision, for it compromised a unique form of
dramatic art for the opportunistic attainment of commercial
vprofit.

What is unique and artistically estimable about
Nigpobre ni rice? The originality and historical im-
portance of the play have merely been hinted at in
recent years. Formerly the work was erroneously associ-

ated with La Codorniz, since its delayed premiere hap-

 

pened to coincide with the apex of this magazine’s fame.
Both the play and the periodical were thus labeled under
the same banner: ”una cruzada contra la cursileria.”9

While in truth the dialogue of Ni pobre ni rico clearly

anticipates the Teatrillos humoristicos in La Codorniz,

 

the value of the play does notterminate with its kinship

to the periodical.

 

9Cristobal de Castro, review in Madrid, December
l8, I943, p. 6.

97

The play’s uniqueness inheres in its extravagant,
absurd, and startling humor, a humor which bears no resem-
blance to the conventional lines of comic farce found in
such playwrights as Carlos Arniches and Munoz Seca. The
total inverisimilitude of the work and its lacerating
satire against timeworn situations and tired clichés,
have endeared it as an inimitable masterwork of the
modern Spanish theater to such critics as Alfredo Mar-
querie, Domingo Pérez Minik, and Emilio Clocchiatti.‘O

Moreover, this play, the composition of which

antedates by ten years the premiere of La Cantatrice

 

Chauve (I950), bears the remarkable resemblance to certain
characteristics which have in more recent years been as-
cribed to the theater of Eugene Ionesco. Like the French-
Romanian playwright, Mihura and Tone also deal with ”the

tragic spectacle of human life reduced to passionless

 

'OMarquerie states that Ni pobre ni rico ”es como
un descanso de gracia descoyuntada y absurda en medio de
un panorama encenizado por la vulgaridad.” See En la
jaula de los leones: Memorias y critica teatral (Madrid:
Ediciones Espafiolas, I944T, p. l56. Pérez Minik claims
that the play is "la mejor obra humoristica del es-
cenario espafiol de postguerra.... Su tejido vivo y su
estilo es ajeno a toda influencia forénea, a toda
herencia tradicional ... y a cualquier voluntad compro-
metida." See Teatro europeo contemporéneo (Madrid:
Guadarrama, I96I), p. 423. CIocchiatti treats the play
as a document of class struggle and lauds it as ”una
sétira contemporénea de la mayor desenvoltura.” See
”Espafia y su teatro contemporéneo," Suplemento de
Insula, No. 26 (January, I964), 2.

 

98

automatism through bourgeois convention and the fos-

all

silization of language. Ni pgbre ni rico is an overt

 

satire on the use of clichés; in attacking the absurdity
and falseness of the commonplace in language, it makes
use of the same resources which Esslin attributes to

Ionesco’s La Cantatrice Chauve, La Lecon, and Les Chaises,

 

 

namely, the abandonment of discursive IOgic and the
reduction of verbal communication to meaningless patter.I2

In our ensuing discussion about Ni pobre ni rico
we will indicate those elements which admit some simila-
rity to the engaging aspects of Ionesco's later contribu-
tions to the Theater of the Absurd. It will be seen that
the admixture of triviality, platitudes, and dislocated
dialogue in Mihura and Tono's work approximates Ionesco’s
exploitation of the syllogistic structure of language, as
evidenced in his early plays. In this respect, Ni pobre
ni rico might well be considered a prelude in embryo to
some elements of the absurd in western European litera-
ture. However, we must stress that its similarities to
subsequent productions within the absurdist tradition can
only be considered coincidental. While the possibility
exists that Ionesco could have been influenced by

Mihura’s avant-garde expressions, the evidence for

 

llMartin Esslin, The Theater of the Absurd (New
York: Anchor, l96l), p. 90.

'2Ioid., pp. 90-95, |00, and 297.

99

asserting such a claim beyond the realm of mere hypo-
thesis is thus far unsubstantial. It is safe to con-
clude that Mihura belongs to that generation of precur-
sors who incited revolutionary changes in the articula-
tion of twentieth-century drama, and who, as Professor
Adolph H. Wegener suggests, brought about "a vast, uni-
versal, esoteric avant-garde movement ... felt in all the
mains of the human mind.”'3

The writings of Martin Esslin and Adolph Wegener,
among others, have eloquently developed the notion that it
is in its attitude toward language that the theater of
the absurd is most revolutionary. The early plays of
Eugene Ionesco and Samuel Beckett, two of the dramatists
most commonly associated with the modern absurdist tradi-
tion, yield ample evidence to confirm the accuracy of
this concept. Their best known works reflect a profound
concern over the breakdown of language in society, a
language consisting of nothing but clichés, empty formu-
las, and slogans. Ionesco deplores the acceptance of
banal utterances and ready-made notions which have ceased
to be the expression of anything alive or vital and have
been degraded ”into a mere conventional token of human

u I ' ”l4
intercourse, a mask for genU|ne mean|ng and emotlon.

 

I3”Observations on the Theatre of the Absurd,”
An unpublished paper presented at the East-West Center,

University of Hawaii, December, I967;

l4Ioid.

IOO

The mechanical exchange of platitudes between the old man

and his wife in Les Chaises and the nonsensical prattle

 

between the Smiths and the Martins in La Cantatrice Chauve

 

illustrate this concern. Samuel Beckett likewise ex-
presses the disintegration of everyday cenversation into
facile formulas and prefabricated meanings. The dialogue
of his plays often becomes divorced not only from happen-
ings depicted through stage action, but is even put into
direct contradiction with the action. The absurd bavar-

dage in En Attendant Godot (I952) and Fin de Partie (I957)

I

 

 

wherein, as Martin Esslin observes, ”no truly dialectical

exchange of thought occurs,”

are striking examples of
Beckett's awareness that language has been devalued as a
vehicle of conceptual t'r.o|.|gi‘it.i5

Mihura and Tono anticipate these features of the
shift in style and taste which ultimately leads to the
recognition of a new aesthetic toward language. As early
as I928 they were each writing, individually, an abstract
and disorbited humor which employed cliches, repetitions,
incongruity, irony, and absurd monologue for purpoSes of
badinage. Their later collaborations in the film industry
evoked high praise for their art at dubbing. They popu-
larized a new kind of dialogue, bereft of internal logic

and calculated to elicit laughter by the intentional de-

formation of the trite and mechanical formulas In

 

ISEsslin, op. cit., p. 45.

 

lDl

everyday speech. One mediocre German film was hailed ”un

ensayo de primer orden” following Mihura and Tono’s work

at dubbing: ”Le colocan un diélogo absurdo, delicioso de

incongruencias, ... de un espiritu inventivo y satirico."i6
The bizarre nature of the language they culti-

vated was labeled ”el humor codornicesco” with the ap-

pearance of the weekly humor magazine they founded in

l94l. La Codorniz, as we observed in Chapter Two, fol-

 

lowed in the tradition of their war—time publication, La
Ametralladora, and conditioned the Spanish public so well
to colloquial nonsense that, by the time La Cantatrice
Chauve was disseminated in Spain, as Ignacio Soldevila
Durante note, Ionesco’s humorous absurdities were already
”una cosa conocida."'7
In reading Ionesco's well-known ”anti-play” of
I950, we are reminded of the tone, the spirit, and some-

times even the content of Mihura's former contributions

to La Codorniz. The fourth scene of La Cantatrice Chauve,

 

for instance, offers an interesting parallel to one of
Mihura's Teatrillos humoristicos of I942, entitled De

viaie. A part of Mihura's text may be quoted as follows:

 

l6Angel ZOfiiga, Una historia del cine (Barcelona:
Ediciones Destino, I948), II, 365.

'7”Sobre el teatro espafiol de los Ultimos veinti-
cinco afios,” Cuadernos Americanos, CXXVI, No. l (January-

February, I963T, 276.

IDZ

El senor Sanchez se senté en su comparti-
mento y empezo a leer el periodico.

El senor Suarez, que iba sentado enfrente
del sefior Sanchez, guardo el suyo, que acababa
de leer, y se dedico a adnirar el paisaje por
la ventanilla.

---Buen tiempo --- dijo el sefior Suarez.

El senor Sanchez contesto distraidamente
y dijo que, en efecto, hacia un hermoso tiempo.

---Quizé haga también buen tiempo en Soria.
dijo el senor Sanchez.

---éCOflOC€ usted Soria?

---;Ya lo creo! He vivido tres afios alli.

---éTres afios -—- dijo el sefior Suarez --—,
Entonces, conocera usted a un tal Soto.

---aAmadeo Soto? iClaro que lo conozcof
Tiene una drogueria en la plaza que hay en-
frente de la estacion.

—--No, no. El Soto que yo digo es farma-
céutico.

---;Ah, sf! Pero no se llama Amadeo; se
llama Gustavo.

---Justamente. gLo conoce usted?

Z--Muchisimo. Iba siempre a la tertulia
de un tal Echave.

---5Conoce usted a Echave? --- exclamo el
sefior Suarez ---. ;Lorenzof iSi es pariente
' I
mio.
---Lorenzo Echave es mi tio --- dijo el

senor Sanchez.

---gTio suyo?

---Si; esta casado con una tal Barnarda,
que es hermana de mi madre.

---gLo dice en serio; Entonces su madre se
llama Adelaida.

—--gLa conoce?

---Claro que la conozco. Es mi mujer.

—--;Su mujer! --- exclamé el senor Suarez,
balanceando un pie ---. gSu mujer? Pero esto
es extraordinario. Usted, entonces, es mi

padre.

To this point Mihura's dialogue resembles the
classic recognition scene between Ionesco’s husband and
wife team, the Martins. They too engage in a series of
interrogations and replies, of considerably greater

length and with heightened grotesquerie. Unlike Ionesco,

l03

Mihura brings complete strangers together in private con-
versation, and consequently allows the episode a semi-
plausible base from which an absurd disclosure of blood
relationship evolves. Nevertheless, the resemblance
between the two versions is quite remarkable.

Mihura continues his episode beyond the humorous
moment of rec0gnition, as we perceive in the following
conclusion to the aforecited dialogue:

---;Quien iba a imaginarselof --- dijo,
emocionado, el sefior Suarez ---. Si no
llegamos a hablar de Soria, no nos hubiéramos
reconocido nunca.

---éSoria? --- pregunto el senor Sanchez,
estupefacto --—. No hemos hablado de Soria,
sino de Segovia.

---éDe Segovia? Estés equivocado. Yo hablaba
de Soria. Evidentemente, ha habido entre
nosotros una confusion. Yo creia que tu
hablabas de Soria y tu creias que yo hablaba
de Segovia. gEntonces, todo lo que hemos

dicho no vale? Y desde el momento que no vale,
yo no soy su hijo.

---;Claramentef Y yo no soy su padre de usted.
Perdoneme.

--—Esté usted perdonado.

Y el senor Sanchez cogio de nuevo su periodico
y el senor Suarez volvio a mirar por la
ventanilla.l

Mihura reverses the fortuitous discovery and
returns the encounter between the two strangers to the
same point where it began. In contrast to the circular
structure of Mihura's sketch, Ionesco's scene pro-
gresses by a growing intensification of the initial

situation, ending with Mr. Martin's revelation: "Alors,

 

I8Mihura, ”De viaje,” La Codorniz (March l5, I942).

 

lO4

chere Madame, je crois qu’il n’y a pas de doute, nous
nous sommes déja vus et vous étes ma propre épouse...
Elisabeth, je t’ai retrouvéef”l9

The difference between the two renderings are
minimal. Their basic features, in terms of meaning and
intention, are identical. Nevertheless, despite these
affinities, there is no evidence to conclude that Ionesco
engaged in a conscious literary appropriation of Mihura's
text.20

Mihura, incidentally, favored the recognition
theme so well that he repeated it with a new focus in

the April 5, I942 issue of La Codorniz, reversing the

 

former prOcedure of a gradual revelation leading to dis-
covery, by permitting the happy encounter of two old
friends to dissolve suddenly into a realization that they
had never before seen each other. Even here Mihura's

intention remains the same: he parodies a common scene

 

—— _,_T

l9Eugene Ionesco, Theatre (Paris: Editions
Gallimard, I954), I, 30.

20Mihura denies that the two writings have a
common source. During certain periods of his adminis-
tration of La Ametralladora and La Codorniz, he did
utilize materials from Italian sources, EUt not as a
part of his signed articles or playlets. His authored
teatrillos, he claims, are entirely original. (Inter-
view with the playwright, June, I967). Ionesco, for his
part, denies that the fourth scene of La Cantatrice Chauve
had a previous literary source. He states that the
recognition scene is based on an actual surprise encounter
with his wife on the Metro in Paris. See The Observer
(London), July l4, I958), quoted by Martin'Esslin,

Theater of the Absurd, p. 92. We must therefore conclude
that whatever resemblance exists between the two writings
is an unintended coincidence.

l05

of reunion by the deliberate inversion of a familiar
pattern. His use of commonplace discourse, juxtaposed
with unusual and absurd actions, heightens the reader’s
apprehension of the foolishness of a universally recog-
nized situation.

This same attention to the trite and ordinary,
framed within the context of a well-known setting, then
deformed by the use of reversal, contradiction, anti-
thesis, and inversion, is what distinguishes the play
Ni pobre ni rico as an early example of absurdist litera-
ture in Spain.

The unexpected impact of the absurd with the
familiar and logical is the principal reSOurce of humor
in Ni pobre ni rico. Its absurdity lies primarily within
the exercise of language. Identities are never confused,
distorted, or lost, as in some works of Ionesco and
Beckett, yet the characters themselves do become de-
humanized to the degree by which they allow the rheto-
rical nature of dead language to render them incapable of
intelligent action. The personalities of Abelardo,
Margarita, the Baronness, and Julio, for instance, are
neither destroyed nor sacrificed before a surprising con-
catenation of absurd utterances, yet their authenticity
as human beings suffers devaluation as a consequence of
their adopting a fossilized debris of clichés. That

their basic unity and consistency as characters remain

l06

intact, is a credit to Mihura and Tono’s craftsmanship.
Eduardo Tacglen has observed this feature with regard to
Mihurian characters in general, that they are all en?
dowed with "una cohesion y una interdependencia con el
que les hace criaturas de un mismo mundo, alejado del
nuestro y, sin embargo, admisible por nosotros."2|
In this play Mihura and Tono have deliberately
applied the mechanics of language to nullify full credi-
bility of character. The storehouse of ready-made expres-
sions which the main characters use are intended not
merely to typify by means of dialogue, but designed to
convey the essential disintegration of human communication
into the empty platitudes of everyday discourse. In this
connection, the following words of José Monleon are
applicable to the comedia:
La palabra (es) un discurso dudoso y

pedante, del que es necesario escapar. La

palabra divide. La palabra es un topico.

La reflexion, cuando se encauza racional-

mente y quiere proyectarse sobre las estruc-

turas, esta radicalmente frenada por la acu-

mulacion de clichés. La palabra en lugar de

ser un instrumento de profundizacion y comu-

nicacién se nos convierte en un término

repetido, vacio, y peligroso. Hay que librarse

de las palabras. La palabra es, desde esta

perspectiva, una expresién del automatismo,
de la irracionalidad, de la exclavitud.

 

2'Eduardo Haro Tecglen, review of Mihura’s El
caso de la sefiora estupenda in Informaciones (Madri-Tu
‘February 7, I953, p. 7.

22"La libertad de Miguel Mihura." Mi uel Mihura,
ed. José Monleon (Madrid: Taurus, I965), pp. 4 -48.

l07

As Monleon affirms, automatism and irrationality
arise from an excess of impoverished language. In
Mihura's play Carlota, this same idea is nggested. One
of the characters defines the attitude by the remark,
”parecia queghablébamos como empleando un manual de con-I
versacion," a statement which also calls to mind the in-

tended parody in Ionesco’s first play and describes as

 

well the impression one gains in reading Ni pobre ni

£I£2223

The incurable stupidity of Margarita illustrates
what will result in allowing senseless words to dehumanize
and dull the spirit. Margarita represents a stubborn

middle class resistance to original thought. She is pre-
judiced, fickle, infantile, and basically materialistic.
Through Abelardo's romantic tributes paid to her early in
Act One, we anticipate meeting a woman of principle, but
in a manner typical of Mihurian plays, her appearance and
behavior invalidate our former expectations. Her prin-
ciples are merely phrases that she learned by heart. She
is illogical, unpredictable, and contradictory, a product
of a world of shallow thinking and self—interest. Her
absurd utterances are like those of Don Sacramento in
Tres sombreros de copa and fall into three major catego-

ries.

 

23Mihura, _O_b_:_a__s_, p. 72|.

lO8

First, she adopts a discourse founded upon trivia.
This she accentuates during serious moments, thereby ren-
dering her language nonsensical. For example, she is
more concerned about a kilo of coffee, a visit to see her
seamstress, or the procurement of olive oil than she is
over a marriage proposal. She engages in a kind of spiral
conversation with Abelardo: from a seemingly trivial
argument she amplifies details into matters of great im-
portance, then tends to refer again and again to the same
topics.

Second, Margarita inverts meanings and confuses
idioms, accepting their literal significance over their
metaphorical sense:

Abelardo --- No tengo donde caerme muerto.
Margarita --- aY para qué quieres caerte
muerto? 4

Third, to questions that elicit choice, she
gives a third alternative; and to questions that can only
be answered with an unqualified yes or no, she gives

relative answers:

Abelardo --- aQué prefieres, un nifio o una
nifia?
Margarita --- Las tres cosas.25

Her replies to Abelardo become progressively
more absurd as the play advances. Her fiance becomes

so exasperated over her verbal nonsense that despite

 

24Mihura, Obras, p. l59.

25Minura, Obras, p. l36.

l09

his blind love for her, he renounces all further interest
in her, a repudiation which underscores the surface
meaning of the play:

Me deprime tu carécter.... Me ahogo con

tus frases estupidas y sin sentido.... iVete
de una vez... vete a vivir tu vida, hecha de
pequefieces, de tépicos, de lugares comunes.
Deja que te olvide y que pueda rehacer mas
tarde mi existencia. Vete, te lo ruego....
iEres la contradiccion misma!

Abelardo, the dreamy, idealistic protagonist,
does remake his life, but not until he has learned that
his love is an obstruction in his way to the realization
of his own personality. He has to break with Margarita

in order to become free. Like Sabino in ;Viva lo

imposiblef, Abelardo must succeed on his own merits..

 

His rejection of Margarita and her self-satisfied world
puts him-on a kinship with the same spirit that motivates
Juan in Mi adorado Juan:
Si, Margarita, marchate con tu tia, con
la baronesa, con tu modista y con tu torta
de manzana. Yo me voy con Gurripato a vivir
en la orilla del rio, a coger peces y a
tomar el so|.27
Abelardo is not without his own repertory of
absurdities, however. Before his liberation he is some-
what like the weak-willed Dionisio of Tres sombreros de

copa, all too prone to adopt the contagious conventions

and ideas of his own surroundings. His actions, motivated

 

2616id., p. l60.

27Ioid., p. |76.

llO

by a frantic infatuation, generate a chain reaction of
absurd happenings. At the outset he willfully brings
about his own financial ruination in deference to Mar-
garita’s illogical affirmation: ”Nunca toleraré.unirme
a un hombre cuya posicién economica es infinitamente

superior a la mia.”28

His subsequent efforts to regain
his lost fortune are triggered again by Margarita's con-
tradicting threat: ”Mientras sea pobre, yo no me casaré

”29 Thus, the basic conflict, from which all

contigo.
ensuing problems stem, originates from a sustained anti-
thesis between wealth and impoverishment. Even Abelardo's
discourse is replete with antithetical notions, as exem-
plified by the following selections:
El amor es una alegria triste y desde
que te amo solo estoy alegre cuando estoy
triste.
El ser pobre es el mayor lujo que me he

permitido en la vida.

No hay nada gue acentue tanto la tristeza
como la alegria. O
Abelardo embodies a complex of contrary actions
and reactions. Until he emancipates himself from a World

of incongruity, he is constantly frustrated in his strug-

gle against contradiction and paradox. As the pivotal

character of the play, he is affected by the absurd

 

28Ibid., p. I35.
29Ibid., p. I6I.
3016id., pp. I34, I50, I56.

behavior of everyone else. They contribute to the

I!

fomenting of el disparate, lo inutil, lo arbitrario,

lo que no sirve para nada,” which he eventually accepts
as the one true reality of life.3|
The equally dreamy and distracted Baroness is one

, of the characters who disarms Abelardo the most. She
does so by her contrary logic, her criticism of Abelardo’s
own use of cliché, and her personal use of common ex-
pressions in an absurd context. In her opening speech
she disapproves of commonplace greetings as ”frases in-
terminables, comentarios estupidos.”32 She then pro-
cedes to deform customary usage by way of dislocated
utterances in her own replies:

Baronesa --- aCémo esta usted?

Abelard>---- No sé. gY usted?

Baronesa --- Yo menos.

Baronesa --- aCémo se llama ella?
Abelardo --- Margarita.

Baronesa --- No me gusta. Tiene nombre de
. péjaro. V
Abelardo --- Diré usted que tiene nombre de
flor.
Baronesa -—- No. Digo que tiene nombre de '
. pajaro.
Abelardo --- Bien. Diga usted lo que quiera.
Baronesa --- Eso hago. 3 .

Julio, Abelardo’s stuffy, conventional servant,
whose propriety rendershim void of human sympathy, serves
a comic function as a contrast to the madness of his

master. Although Abelardo tries to persuade Julio to-

 

3lIbid., p. I20. 321bid., p. I22.
33Ibid., p. I48, I24.

|l2

smell a bouquet of flowers, hoping the experience will
'enervate his priggish attitude and make him more humane,
the servant is unwilling. "No Ias huelo. Yo soy un

hombre honrado."34

At this point, Julie is very much like
the conformable Vicente in Lyiva lo Imposible! and the or-
_thodox Don Sacramento in Tres sombreros de copa. However,
in the end Julio transfers his own identity to that of
Abelardo’s;-he too adopts eccentricity in an effort to be
rid of ritualistic conformity. The final scenefinds him
walking across the stage, dressed as a beggar, carrying
bread crumbs in a cone. .

This conversion of the former snob into a vaga-
bond unveils the basic meaning behind Mihura and Tono’s
play. By upholding and favoring a bohemian posture,
supported by the arbitrary and absurd in human action
the playwrights imply the meaninglessness of the reality
which we accept as a reasonable and organized pattern of
human existence, and thus they subscribe to the validity
of a liberating departure into the gratuitous realm of
inconsistency, nonconformity, and utter nonsense, in
order to enhance the joy of living.

Consequently, Ni pobre ni rico enjoys aclose afs
finity with the purport and spirit of iViva lo imposible!
and Tres sombreros de cope, The three comedies may be

said to form a trilogy in which the stylized and

 

34Ibid., p. I2I.

ll3

stereotyped comportment of the upper and middle classes
in society are placed in confrontation with a free-
thinking and unconventional world, resulting in a satire
on the former way of life and an endorsement for the
latter.

- The play also employs elements of the absurd
other than those already mentioned. Among them is a
category of unusual objects and their surprising ap-
pearance on stage. In iViva lo imposible! this exhibi-
tion of curious articles included an oriental gong, a
clown playing a violin, and numerous trappings connected
with the circus environment.) Though striking for their
novelty and exciting as stage props, none of the un-
common objects in the Calvo Sotelo -- Mihura production
appeared without logical verbal or thematic preparation.
In contrast, the strange things which spring forth in
both Ni pobre ni rico and Tres sombreros de copa are
entirely unexpected and bear little or no resemblance to
stage action or dialogue. Such items are manifested with
a regularity just short of the kind of proliferation
usually associated with Ionesco's theater.

In Act One of Ni pobre ni rico, for instance,
three inventors are engaged with Abelardo in the longest
sustained dialogue of the absurd to be found in Mihura's
theater.' The scene is as fantastic as anything in
Ionesco. One inventor carries a harp and a large auto-.

mobile klaxon, but neither instrument is capable of

ll4

making any noise. The second has a saw that sounds a
bell when its'work is finished; he tests his invention
by sawing the legs off a table in the room, but the bell
does not work. The third reveals an electric apparatus
for peeling potatoes, though it can peel but one soli-
tary potato before breaking doWn, never to work again.

In a later scene the Baroness enters, carrying a
portable gramophone and records which never leave her
side. On one occasion_she pulls a loaf of bread out of
her pocket, an act similar to the sudden and surprising
appearance of foreign articles in Act Two of Tres som-
breros de cope. -

Other examples of this category Include the
flowers that Abelardo frequently carries in either or
both hands; the arrival of three thieves in a car with a
mule; the appearance of trumpets, hatchets, ladders, and
hoses with four firemen; the emergence of the Baroness'
chauffeur displaying a flag; and the silent stroll
across the stage by Julio, wearing a derby and carrying
a paper cornucopia teeming with bread crumbs.

Even normal objects are either misidentified,
misused, or given an absurd dimension. Abelardo moves
time ahead by turning forward the hands on his clock; the
Baroness starts to exit by the window; Margarita attempts
to relocate the natural setting of a city park as though

she were rearranging house furniture; her stupid aunt

ll5

mistakes a typewriter for a piano, then remarks upon
typing how woefully out of tune it is!

These examples of the humor of incongruity sug-
gest a rapport with the comedy of vaudeville and the
slapstick farces of the Marx Brothers. Indeed, one of
' the chief characteristics of the absurd theater of the
post-war periOd‘is that it borrows some objects for
scenic effect from the circus, from the commedia dell’
arte and from the comedy of the music hall.

Mihura obviously has a penchant for this tradi-
tion, for we encounter the appearance of unfamiliar
phenomena in many of his plays. It is most common in
Tres sombreros de copa, as we will observe in Chapter
Six. The tendency is likewise noted in Carlota, where
the detective Harris pulls out a steaming cup of tea

from his coat pocket.35

The final act of Milagrggen casa
de los Lopez includes the unwarranted and somewhat'pre-
posterous appearance of a girl in a bikini followed by
the materialization of a transparent angel, both emerging
from behind the living room draperies.

Ni pobre ni rico also contains a variety of lin-
guistic absurdities, a feature which came to be very

much in vogue in the absurdist writings of the early

l950’s. Among these elements in Mihura and Tono’s work,

 

35Mihura, ngas, p. 703.

||6

we find a breakdown of plausible associations and a loss
of precise terms and attributes. Ruptures in phraseology_
invite incongruency and elicit laughter. The word pobra
is used in reference to a female pauper. Agua dura is

employed in the same context with pan duro. Thus, pro-.

-perties-that normally correspond to one thing or can
only apply to a-particular linguistic mold, are trans-
ferred to a totally unlike object or are improperly
rendered, admitting a disconfiguration to hamper natural
understanding and to further the playful banter of the
comedy’s purpose. Francisco de Cossio correctly observed
on the night of its estreno that this play represents
the surrealism of humor on the Spanish Stage.36

Some eXpressions readily fall into a category
of complete nonsense. Some of these border on forced,
contrived, and topical jokes, reminiscent of the low
comedy of vaudeville:

Mis padres, que eran tres....

Soy un pobre pajarito.
Y-usted dos.

---Si no recuerdo mal, tenemos dos hijos.
---Tres.

---gTres? Yo no he visto mas que dos.
---Bueno, es que el mayor es sordo.

---Tiene usted cara de raquitico.

---Es que he tenido una enfermedad muy grave.
---aY como salio usted de ella?

---Pues me mori.»

 

36Quoted in M. Sanchez Camargo, review in EL
Alcézar (Madrid), December 8, l943, p. 2.

ll7

---Pues no encuentro los cinco céntimos.
---Se los habra gastado en un tranvia.
---No, porque, en ese caso, tendria el
tranVIa.

---Esa cara la he visto yo en otra garte.
---Pues la he tenido siempre aqui.3

The last four quips are typical examples of the kind of
.chiste mihuriano most commonly associated with La
Codorniz. The last joke, in fact, appeared in an early
edition of the periodical with this variation: I

---Yo he visto su cara en otra parte.
---Me extrafia porque siempre la llevo puesta.

38
We have here an example of Mihura imitating Mihura.

These farcical jests seem to be characteristic
of Mihura’s early form of humor. Fortunately, they re-
present but a small portfon of his humoristic resources
for the stage and become less and less frequent as the
author shifts his direction from verbal humor to situa-
tion comedy following the estreno of Tres sombreros de
BEBE-

With regard to absurd reversals of anticipated
behavior, the following summarized situations should
suffice to further delineate the absurdist spirit of
Ni pobre ni rico:

Abelardo schedules three thieves to rob his

home. He insists they do so rapidly or he will phone

 

37Mihura, Obras, pp. I45—I47, |5I, I75.

38Quoted in Evaristo Acevedo, op. cit. (above,
note 7), p. 253.

l|8

the police. He asks them not to make any noise and to
leave carefully so they will not be apprehended. They
are, as he says, ”unos ladrones de bien."39
A group of firemen beckon to another of Abelardo’s
appointments. They casually sit down, take a drink, and
ask ridiculous questions while the house is blazing. They
aid the progress of the fire by throwing math books and
furniture into the flames. Their domestic nonchalance

foreshadows -- if only by coincidence -- the unusual

appearance of the firemen in Ionesco's La Cantatrice

 

Chauve.

Reversals in physical attire are also common.
Some of the characters dressed as aristocrats appear
later as vagabonds. Incongruous behavior accompanies
their change. Abelardo, a beggar in Act Two, gives a
five-cent limosna to the wealthy Don Cristino.’ An authen-
tic pauper whistles a difficult operatic air. Three
noble ladies have a picnic on the park lawn with Abelardo
and his beggar friends. Finally, the vagabonds them-
selves organize a syndicate and undertake to draft the

city’s vagrants into a prosperous union.40

39Mihura, Obras, p. I30.

4OEmilio Clocchiatti cites this episode as evi-
dence of the play's socio-economic intent. See Insula,
No. 206 (January, I964), l. Juan Guerrero Zamora like-
wise mentions this element in his consideration of the
play's philosophic implications. He views it as re-
vealing the transition in Spain from a bourgeois society
to a bureaucratic reality. See his Historia del teatro
contemporéneo, (Barcelona: Juan Flors, l9 , , 7 -

ll9

One final observation, difficult to ignore, con-
cerns one facet of style, namely the ever-present tripli-.
cation of which we spoke in Chapter Three. In Ni pobre
ni rico, Mihura and Tono employ over twelve sets of units-
by-three, involving nouns, verbs, and adjectives. Three
~typical-examples are as follows:

Los inventos ... representan un es-
fuerzo y una ilusion y una esperanza.

La recibiré, perdonaré lo que me ha
hecho sufrir y me echaré a sus brazos.

Soy un hombre derrotado, exhausto y
sin voluntad.

In this chapter we have attempted to view Ni
_pobre ni rico as a play of verbal nonsense that uses
elements of the absurd to combat mental laziness and to
point out the insufficiency of a language that no longer
corresponds fully to reality. Like other successful
satires that depend upon deviation, incoherence, and
incongruity to elucidate the human condition, Mihura
and Tono’s work offers insights analogous to life. By

following its own laws of logic, the play has a coherent

 

Each of these viewpoints impresses the present writer

as being overstated. The socio-economic factors in the
plot are mere devices, it would seem, contributing to the
furtherance of the authors' intention to satirize the
ridiculous nature of a sterile language. That they
fanction as parody is not denied, but they do not con-
stitute the paramount focal point of the comedy.

4'Mihura, Obras, pp. II8, I49.

l20

purpose. Favoring the arbitrary over the contingent,
its authors achieve the kind of liberating effect that
Martin Esslin refers to when he says that an absurd
play should expand the limits of sense and Open up vis-
tas of freedom from logic and cramping convention.42

.It is understandable why this play and La
Codorniz ignited-public furor. Both writings -- the one
dramatic, the other journalistic -- anticipated by ten
years the spirit of the absurd in contemporary litera-
ture. Their impact has added a new direction to Spanish
humoristic literature.

Though a commercial failure in I943, the play
has gained prestige over the years. We would agree with
Alfonso Prego’s observation that "una comedia que ha
fracasadb puede contener ... mas y mayores verdades del
espiritu que otra que triunfo.”43

Alfredo Marquerie was one of the first to recog-
nize the play's avant-garde character. As early as I944
he wrote:

Los que pretendan imitar a Tono y a Mihura,

estén perdidos, porque el secreto de la risa en
estos humoristas se halla absolutamente identi-

ficado a su doble y conjunta personalidad. Les
sigue como la sombra al cuerpo. Y es inutil que

 

42Martin Esslin, Theatre of the Absurd, p. 247.

43”El teatro de Miguel Mihura," Primer Acto, No.
l0 (October, I959), l9.

l2l

nadie trate de arrebatarles esa buena sombra,

porque la sombra es lo Onico que no se puede

quitar ni plagiar.44
Twelve years later and several years after the appearance
of Ionesco and Beckett on the European stage, this eminent

critic once again hailed Ni pobre ni rico as a prodigy of

 

Vthe absurdist theater, labeling it "una trepidacion des-
tructiva, revolucionaria, contra el topico y la frase
hecha."45 ‘
However, to designate this play as a legitimate
member of absurdist literature requires one basic quali-
fication. Ni pobre ni rico is not a philosophic expres-
sion of the absurdity of human existence. It is not a
play of ideas whose subject matter is somber, violent,
or bitter. We have seen that its dialogue discloses no
evidence of an all—prevailing sense of anguish at the
disintegration of man in a world of decomposdtion. Man’s
isolation and spiritual dereliction, so frequently en-
countered in the French absurdist writers of the l950's,
is nowhere hinted at in Mihura and Tono’s play.' Nihilism,
existential despair, and the psychic annihilation of the
Mndividualtare totally absent. Consequently, inasmuch as
the Spanish playwrights are not cencerned with the enig-

matic aspects of being, their work should not be weighed

 

44En la jaula de los leones: Memorias y critica
teatral (above, note I0), pp. l56—l57.

45"Nuestros autores de post- guerra," Teatro,
No. l9 (May- August, I956), l2.

I22

in the same balance with La Cantatrice Chauve, Les

Chaises, and Fin_de Partie, plays in which man is

 

depicted as truly divorced from his transcendental roots.

Ni pobre ni rico is simply a humorous farce that
satirizes an existing state of affairs, namely, the fact
'that communication between human beings is in a process
of gradual breakdown and that the senseless conventions
of inconsequential speech are producing a yawning gulf
between language and reality.

One must admit a diversity of method and form
within the tradition of the absurd, for the theater of
the absurd itself is, after all, merely a term applied by
critics, editors, and historians of literature, in label-
ing a group of authors who rarely, if ever, apply the
term ”absurdist” to themselves.46 ”What is sometimes
labeled the absurd," writesEugene Ionesco,” is Only the
denunciation of the ridiculous nature of a language which
is empty of substance, sterile, made up of clichés and
slogans.”47 In this respect, Mihura and Tono play a
significant role in the tradition of the absurd. Indeed,

by virtue of their avant-garde venture of l939 into this

 

46See Adolph H. We ener, "The Absurd in Modern
Literature," Books Abroad ISpring, I967), pp. l50-l56;
also, Esslin,IThe Theater of the Absurd, preface xviii.

47"The Avant-garde Theater," World Theater,
VIII, No. 3 (Autumn, I959), I88.

I23

phenomenon, they stand among the precursors of a rich
and variegated trend in twentieth-century literature and
they have claim to the undisputed honor of having
inaugurated a special sense of the absurd on the Spanish

stage.

CHAPTER FIVE

TOWARD A CONSERVATIVE POSTURE:
EL CASO DE LA MUJER ASESINADITA

Two years following the staging of Ni pobre ni
glee, Mihura found himself obliged by financial neces-
sity to write a new play.' The basic idea for its plot
was already clear in his mind when, one morning in the
fall of I945, he encountered his young friend Alvaro de
Laiglesia in Madrid's Cervecerfa de Correos. LaigleSia,
now twenty—three years of age, had assumed managerShip
of La Codorniz only one year before. He was so enthu-
siastic over Mihura’s idea that he immediately accepted
a casual invitation to collaborate with Don Miguel in
writing the play. Mihura relates the events which en-
sued from this fortuitous chat in the following laconic
manner:

Alvaro ha trabajo conmigo desde nifio.
Conoce todos mis defectos, pero también .
todas mis virtudes. Y, sobre todo, trabaja

como un barbaro. A Ias diez de la mafiana

ya estaba en mi casa, hacia que me levantase
de la cama y que nos pusiéramos a trabajar. ,
Y asi, en veinte dias escasos, terminamos de
escribir la comedia. ,

. lJoaqUin Aguirre Bellver, "Miguel Mihura, 0 el
§9rillo en el hogar,” Madrid, November 25, l96l, p. 9.

2Mihura, Obras, pp. 39-40.
I24

I25

To what extent Alvaro de Laiglesia contributed to
the play’s formulation is not clearly established. It
appears he provided more moral support than actual wr|t|ng,
judging from Medardo Fraile’s assertion that his influence
”is nowhere to be seen” in the work.3

Upon its completion, the play was read to several
friends in Barcelona -- actors, directors, and other
playwrights, -- all of whom advised the authors to re-
duce the jokes in number and to eliminate clever word-
play ”porque los chistes desvirtuan la trama, y porque
la trama es demasiado seria y complicada."4

Mihura was appalled.' He had deliberately set
out to divert, to amuse, to fill the strange and puzzling
action of his comedy with ”frases graciosas” that would
please the public’s taste for an entertainment super-
charged with humor. Nevertheless, he and Laiglesia
complied with their friends’ request. They purged-their
play again and again of its surface pleasantries, then
prepared it for a February estreno in Madrid's Teatro
Maria Guerrero.

The public reaction and the critical response to
this new production, entitled El caso de la mujer

asesinadita, disconcerted Mihura, not because adverse

 

 

3”Twenty Years of Theater in Spain," trans.
Mildred Boyer, Texas Quarterly, IV, No. I (Spring, l96l),
99.

4Mihura, Obras, p. 40.

I26

reviews followed its premiere, (as a matter of fact,
the play was accorded very favorable reviews), but rather
because this work, like his former plays, was also labeled
”extrafia e imponente," "codornicesca," and "vanguardista"
by those who celebrated its artistic merits.5 And this
'response was occasioned despite the authors’ efforts to
alert their audience that the play had nothing to do with
La Codorniz.6

’ The public was apparently conditioned to antici-
pate a style of humor known by the absurd and disorbited
nature of its language. The mere fact that the first

editor of La Codorniz and his successor had collaborated

 

on the same play was sufficient evidence to persuade the
vast majority of theatergoers that the work was intimately
and irrevocably linked with the popular humor magazine.
Many thus entered the theater with a preconceived notion,
and interpreted everything they saw as the obvious con-

firmation of their expectations.

 

5Mihura, Obras, pp. 40, 4|.

6Mihura and Laiglesia wrote the following caution-
ary reminder as part of their "Autocritica" that was pub-
lished in the major Madrilenian newspapers the day before
the play’s premiere: ,

"Es muy interesante que ustedes sepan que EL
caso de la mujer asesinadita es una estupenda comedia
que no tiene nada que ver con La Codorniz.... No solo
es una comedia seria, atrevida y emocionante, sino que
muy bien hubiera podido ser una comedia melodramética
Si nosotros no lo hubiésemos impedido tomando Ias cosas
un poco a broma." See Mihura and Laiglesia, "Auto-
critica, Marca (Madrid), February 2|, I946, p. 4.

I27

Mihura recorded his dismay as follows:
Lo que yo creia que era una obra de
publico resultaba casi una obra de van-
guardia.... Yo me hice un lio tremendo
y dejé de pensar definitivamente en el
teatro.7
His disillusionment concerning what he considered an
unwarranted classification of his play as a staged ex-
tension of La Codorniz was particularly aggravated when
the entire production netted him the trifling sum of
l2,000 pesetas.8
Mihura forsook the theater for six years. In the.
interim, as we discussed earlier, he earned a small for-
tune in the film industry. Upon his return to play-
writing with the success of Tres sombreros de cgpa, he
firmly repudiated the codornicesco tradition of his avant-
garde humor; hereafter we would affirm over and again the
formula that since I952 has characterized his commercial
triumphs and personal prosperity: ”Solamente hay uha
orientacion que puede seguirse en el teatro. Estrenar
comedias que gusten, representadas por actores que

9
Interesen."

In the present chapter, El caso de la mujer

asesinadita will be examined as a work of transition in

7Mihura, Obras, p. 4|.
8A. 0. Olano, El Alcézar (Madrid), April 4, I953,

9Ricardo Domenech, "Reflexiones sobre la Situa-
cion del teatro," Primer Acto, No. 42 (I963), 7.

l28

the evolution of Mihura’s theater. The play represents
a mid-way point in the author’s voluntary effort to shift,
his stage aesthetics from one of an appeal to the cul-
tured, sophisticated minority, to a plan designed to en-
gage the interests of a sizeable middle class audience.
In other words, the play reflects the conversion from
Spontaneity to the adoption of a conventional and com-
promising attitude.

Ironically, however, Mujer asesinadita was
written and produced with the eXpressed intention of
pleasing the general public; it was meant to be "un mero
pasatiempo entretenido," according to a correspondent for
LgWEstafetgLiteraria.IO However, the given historical
moment had earmarked Mihura as fun rebelde de la gracia

nueva,”

and as such the play was received and has
generally been esteemed as a product of the author’s
revolutionary harvest.'I

There are, of course, several elements within
the context of the play to justify considering thecomedy
an avant-garde work. [Mihura’s familiar hand is very

apparent. It is consequently our primary concern to

point out these aspects of an avant-garde tone, yet

 

IOLuis Molero Manglano, "El-teatro espafibl desde
|939 hasta nuestros dias," La Estafeta Literaria, No.
l63 (February I5, I959), l0.

IiM. Sénchez Camargo, review of "El caso de la
mujer asesinadita," in El Alcézar (Madrid), February 2|,
I946, p. 8-

I29

at the same time we will also call attention to those

componentswhich distinguish Mujer asesinadita from the.
formulas more common to Mihura’s three earlier writings.

In general terms, this three-act comedy differs
from Mihura’s former productions by its technical
superiority and its perfectly structured intrigue. Des-
pite its having been written in only twenty days, the
play reveals an extraordinary ingenuity of construction.
The frequent shifting of its action from fantasy to
reality and back again to the world of dreams is managed
with the ease of sound intelligence and with an air of
polished sophistication. i

José Monleén designates the work "una pirueta de
gran preciosismo formal," observing with emphasis that in
his opinion ”hay muy pocas obras en el teatro espafiol que

"'2 Torrente

estén construidas con tanta habilidad.
Ballester has likewise extolled the play for its "per-
feccion constructiva.”l8 This statement also calls to
mind the high rating accorded the play in Gonzalez Ruiz’

dated study on the Spanish contemporary theater, wherein

he remarks that is is "Ia mas importante, tal vez, de

las comedias del nuevo teatro espafiol hasta la fecha en-

 

I2”La libertad de Miguel Mihura," Miguel Mihura,
ed. José Monleén (Madrid: Taurus, I965), p. 55.

I3Gonzalo Torrente Ballester, "El teatro serio de
un humorista," Ibid., p. 69. -

l30

u|4

que escribimos. He too makes specific reference to

the work’s ”armazon del interés," that is, its highly
structured intrigue which, at its best, wields with

If

singular efficiency eI ambiente misterioso y denso, el

clima de la inquietud, el miedo a algo ignorado e inevi-
. table.”.'5

These are perhaps the very merits that earned the
comedy considerable recognition on an international
billing. It broke a record in Mexico City, for example,
when it reached its 4l5th performance in l964.|6

Mujer asesinadita contains none of the strange

 

verbal dislocations or logical distortions common to the
three other plays features in this study. Its language
is simple, sober, and natUral, though irrelevant on

occasion. There are a number of episodes clearly shorn

 

4Nicolas Gonzalez Ruis, La cultura espafiola en
los Ultimos veinte afios: El teatro (Madrid: Instituto
de Cultura Hispanica, I949), p. 40.

”Ibid., p. 4|.

l6Other foreign presentations or adaptations of
this play have appeared in Argentina, Chile, Italy, Por-
tugal, England, Belgium, and the United States. See
José Monleon, ”Obras de Miguel Mihura traducidas o
adaptadas a otros idiomas," op. cit. (above, note l2),
p. |53.

One even finds a warped adaptation of the comedy
in Philadelphia’s Walnut Street Theater for a short run
in I964. sThe play was entitled Rich Little Rich Girl
and involved a wealthy female capitalist in a murder plot
with a South American dictator. The play folded after
two weeks. See Otis L. Guernsey, Jr., The Best Plays of
l964-75 (New York: Dodd, Mean, and Company, T9657,

p. 37l. '

I3I

of humor; their Inconsequential dialogue, though elegant
and credible, appears to be the vestige of Mihura and
Laiglesia’s endeavor to divest the work of excessive
drollery. This is particularly noticeable in Lorenzo’s
lengthy flirtation scene with Raquel in Act Two and the
Christmas Eve small talk through most of Act Three.

This is one of the few plays in Mihura’s total
production to achieve its effectiveness through means
other than dialogue. A predominance of spiritualistic
elements comprises its most cogent appeal. In an at-
mosphere already rarefied with puzzling and mysterious
tones, owing to constant reminders about a murder and the
intricate fusion of dreams_with reality, these elements
seem to wrest our interest from the cleverness and fluidity
of the characters’ speech to concentrate our attention
more on the surface action.

Alfredo Marquerie lists the various themes con-
cerning occultism in this unique work as follows:

... temas del terror y de la metapsi-
quica, la telepatia, la premonicion, Ias
adivinaciones del inframundo de los suefios,
el espiritismo, lee apariciones fantasmales
y la qUIromanCIa. ‘
Add to this list the attendant theme of adultery, in-
corporated within the context of the murder episode, and

one can readily understand why the play was labeled by

one Italian reporter as "una obra cuyo aspecto moral es

 

l7Ve‘inte afios de teatro en Espafia (Madrid:
Editora Nacional, I959), p. I47.

I32

desdichadisimo,... peligroso para todos."|8 This same
critic however, concurred with the majority of noted
Spanish reviewers in admitting that these distrusted
recondite elements exemplify, inia literary sense, "un
notable esfuerzo por llevar el teatro por derroteros de
arte y-novedad.”I9

The novelty spoken of here is the very attribute
which motivated Gonzalez Ruiz to declare that the play
contains a definite avant-garde feature in that it mani-
fests itself ”libre de las trabas convencionales y los
costumbrismos mediocres que casi ahogannuestro teatro."20
This uniqueness is evident in the recurring parallelism
which the authors sustain in all three acts of their
play. They juxtapose a serious and precise reality with
a whimsical taste of the supernatural. The real world of
romance and intrigue shifts indistinguishably into an
unreal world characterized by seances, ghosts, and'divi-
nation.

Most of Act One, for example, is pervaded by the
enigmatic incidents of a single dream superimposing

its own reality upon the reality of life. This dream

sequence is reiterated in Act Two, as the gradual

 

I8Mateo Enriquez, review of-"Mujer asesinadita,"
in Ecclesia (Rome), August 6, I946.

Iglbid.

20Nicolas Gonzalez Ruiz, op. cit. (above, note
l4), p. 42.

I33

realization of its fatalistic tidings is made more and
more apparent. A second dream (Norton’s) confirms the
former (Mercedes’), and reality consists once again of
the concurrence of normal fact and supernatural events.
Realistic action is further complicated by the appearance
of two old people dressed in mourning who have been dead
for five years. In Act Three the previous dreams merge
into a meaningful context of factual existence. Prophecy
is fulfilled with the deaths of Mercedes and Norton, and
their spiritual union restores the supernatural theme.
Just as fantasy appears to replace reality in the ter-
minal scene, the action shifts again to disclose the real-
life boredom of Raquel and Lorenzo, two of the principal
characters whose role is exempt from the excitement and
exhilaration of transcendental occurrences.

Guerrero Zamora maintains that it is this fusion
between humor and mystery -- the same notion we prefer
to call the reciprocal exchange between reality and
fantasy -- that gives to the comedy its distinctive
quality.2| This quality reaches its maximum force in
the dramatized encounter -- effected only by the use of
etherial voices off stage -- between the recently assas-

sinated Mercedes and the spirit of Norton.

Mihura and Laiglesia’s comedy clearly partakes of

the same atmosphere that characterizes Noel Coward’s

 

2|Juan Guerrero Zamora, Histogja del teatro
contemporépeo, III (Barcelona: Juan Flors, I962), I77.

I34

Blithe Spirit (l94l), a play that was breaking all re-
cords in London at the same time Mujer asesinadita was,
performed in Madrid. Coward’s work, as Fernandez de
Asis points out, differs considerably in terms of the
plot line; the correspondence is merely one of "una misma
v modalidad ... de la época."22.
While we are on the subject of literary simila-
rities, it may be of interest to mention that Jorge de la
Cueva finds a resemblance in the appearance of the old
deceased couple in Act Two of Mujer asesinadita to the
entrance of the Heavenly Policemen in Ferenc Molnar’s
Liliom (I909).23 Alfredo Marquerie observes a likeness
between the carefree chatter in Joseph Kesselring’s
Arsenic and Old Lace (l94l) in the scene concerning the
preparation of a deadly poison, and the corresponding
incident in Act Two of Mihura’s play.24 Diez Crespo
finds an echo of Cocteau with regard to the soft acCent

* 25
of mystery lying beneath the course of a clear plot.

These are all peripheral resemblances, of course, and in

no way do they suggest direct literary influence.

 

- 22Review of "Mujer asesinadita,” in Pueblo
(Madrid), February 2|, I946, p. 4.

23Review of "Mujer asesinadita," in jg (Madrid),
February 2|, I946, p. 5. '

24Review of "Mujer asesinadita," in ABC (Madrid),
February 2|, |946, p. 2|. ' .

25Review of "Mujer asesinadita,” in.Arriba
(Madrid), February 2|, I946, p. 4.

l35

Marquerie is quick to point out that while Mihura res-
ponds to a theme in vogue in Western films and literature,
El caso de la mujer asesinadita ”es de una total y abso-
luta originalidad... que busca su inspiracién en la zona
de lo raro y de lo inquietante."26

Only once since this play has Mihura introduced
an aspeCt of the supernatural in his writings. 'Milagro
en caSa de los Lopez (Barcelona, I964) presents a bur-
lesque notion of otherworldliness, but it differs from
Mujer asesinadita by relegating the supernatural to the
background, while in his play written With Laiglesia,
Mihura permits fantastic happenings to take a decisive
role in the deveLopment of the plot.

Perhaps one reason why critics and literary his-
torians mention this well-constructed play in connec-
tion with Mihura’s avantsgarde productions is because its
first act contains certain elements reminiscent of the
kind of absurdity that is associated with the author’s
early period. The appearance of Norton as an American
Indian, for example, lends credence to the view that the
play evinces a sign of surface nonsense. Professor
Theodore S. Beardsley objects to Mihura’s Indian as "a

loose, disturbing, untied thread" in a play that is

"otherwise too tidy to allow us to assume that this is

 

26Marquerie, op. cit. (above, note 24).

I36

not a calculated technique.”27 The Indian, however, is
simply an expressionistic element existing in the dream'
world of Mercedes, who conjures up many unusual details
to accompany the true omen of her impending murder. The
Indian functions to reduce the lucidity of her dream and
to graft a fabricated element of illogic and distortion
upon the course of an otherwise normal world. This is a
procedure typical of Mihura in his early theater and it
does contribute to the linking of this play with other
comedies of that epoch.

Another unusual figment of Mercedes’ imagination,
reproduced as though it were a realistic happening, is
the maid’s first-scene exit carrying a bird cage with a
canary in it, followed by her immediate entrance carrying
the same cage that now contains a cat. Mercedes also
dreams that her servants are haughty and insubordinate to
her, a notion which provides an amusing contrast after
the dream when we note how obsequious and gentle in their
manner in real life.

i The title of the play suggests one additional
reason to justify the tendency of critics to include
Mujer asesinadita in Mihura’s avant-garde period. The
diminutive appended to asesinada catches us off guard;

we are amused at the thought of a woman being "a little

27Medardo Fraile, "Twenty Years of Theater in
Spain," trans. Mildred Boyer, op. cit. (above, note 3),
p. 99.

I37

bit murdered,” or we chuckle with Mildred Boyer’s less
effective translation, "The Case of the Woman’s Nice
Little Murder."28 In titling their play in this manner,
Mihura and Laiglesia are merelyresponding to a popular
trend of their day. A surprisingly large number of plays
.of the post-Civil War era are distinguished by a humor of
incongruity in their titles. Jardiel Poncela engages in
this practice often, as illustrated by the comedy mep
mejor estan Ias rubias con patatas. Mihura and Tono in-
corporated absurd incongruityin the title of their play,‘
Nipobre ni rico, sino todo lo contrario. Tono continued

this practice in several of his plays, such as Guillermo

 

.flppeL and Crimenplusgggmperfecto. Laiglesia also in-
dulged in titular antics with such captions as En el cielo
ho hay almejas and T0 también naciste desnudito.

Another popular trend that gained impetus during
the I940’s and blossomed enormously during the next
decade, was the writing of mystery plays, or dramatized
detective novels. Mihura’s three "Case" plays are not
all comedies of intrigue, as their titles might suggest,
but they do exemplify the author’s propensity to culti-

29

vate plays of this familiar genre. Carlota is perhaps

 

28Medardo Fraile, "Twenty Years of Theater in
Spain,” trans. Mildred Boyer, op. cit. (above, note 3),
p. 99. ‘

29The comedies that best represent Mihura’s re-
pertory of mystery dramas include Una mu'er cual uiera _
(l953), Carlota (I957), Melocoton en gimjbar If 58 , and
La decente (I967).

 

l38

his best-known contribution to the provocative class of

"el género policiaco.’

theater known in Spain as

Mujergpesinadita also partakes of this climate.
Throughout the play new notes of mystery and suspense are
constantly interjected. Because a criminal act is im-
minent from the beginning, the element of time becomes im-
portant to the action; the position or location of physical
objects takes on an added significance; the entrances and
exits of all major characters become essential to our
interest in the development of the plot. Overall, there
is a light-hearted feeling of impending doom. But instead
of pity and fear, we experienée a sense of amusement at
the action, and astonishment before the many supernatural
resources Mihura and Laiglesia evoke to flavor their
satire.

Through the magic of humor, upheld in this work
in the roles of Raquel and Norton, the authors control the
intrigue within an atmosphere of subdued jocularity. Thus
it is that comic elements often lie in contrast between
the theme of suspense and the light, sometimes frivolous,
tone in which people are talking. And thUS it is that
the play can make a spoof of the tediousness of a dull
marriage and can Iampoon occult practices within the.
framework of a clever and stirring mystery drama that-in-
troduces the serious themess of infidelity and homicide.

Finally, the play offers a thematic parallel to

previous and forthcoming Mihurian productions. As in

I39

the plays we treat in other chapters, behind all major
resolves in the action of Mujer asesinadita lies.an inf
citement produced by boredom. Nearly everyone is bored
to death in this play. Mercedes, the protagonist, is
presented to us with an "aire ausente y roméntico, que,
Apara no-aburrirse demasiado en su matrimonio, se entre-
tiene en leer novelas de aventuras y en dar la lata a las

30 '
criadas." Her friendless and indifferent relationship
with her husband grows increasingly colorless, until, a
victim of his hand, she finds in death a welcomed relief
from her tedium.

Rosaura, the fat cook, gives utterance to her de-
lusions of grandeur. She prefers to live in a world of
make-believe as an escape from monotony, fearing the
dullness of her life will drive her insane:

aMe divierte decir mentiras! 3Llevo

toda mi vida metida en la cocina, haciendo
croquetas para la sehora y haciendo besugo
al horno para el sehor, y necesito decir
mentiras para divertirme y no volverme Iocaf
gTu sabes lo que es pasarse un afio, y otro
aho, en pielante un fogon, viendo como
hierve el agua de una olla? iHay veces que
parece que son tus misma? sesos los que
hierven, y entoncesfi...

. Renato, the gardener, eXpresses the galling

ennui he too suffers from the dreary tasks he daily

performs:

 

3QMihura, Obras, p. I83.
3'Ioid., p. I84.

I40

Estoy reventado de pedar los arboles,

de regar el jard'n, de mirar al cielo sin
saber por qué...

Lorenzo, the husband, is terribly bored with his
listless wife. He is characterIZed as an unimaginative,
dull, stupid human being. Though he murders Mercedes in
a carefree, prosaic manner, hoping thereby to find
freedom and felicity with Raquel, he discovers nothing
but absolute boredom in her presence. For now that the
adventure of a secret adultery has ended, his life is
dreary and dull! The final stage directions bring the
action to a fitting close with two lazy yawns:

En una butaca, haciendo labor, esta

Raquel con la bata de Mercedes. En otra
butaca, leyendo un periodioo, esta
Lorenzo.... Los dos tienen aspecto de
aburrirse como caballos. Raqueg bosteza.
Lorenzo bosteza. Cae el telon. 3

We have seen wherein El caso de la mujer asesina-
dita represents a partial departure from Mihura’s revo-
lutionary theater of humor. Consciously aware of their
craft, Mihura and Laiglesia have endeavored to weave a
humor of situation within the framework of a serious
theme. A spontaneity of dialogue, so characteristic of
the language and the construction of Mihura’s former

writings, is not apparent in the thoughtful, though-

playful, technical achievement of Mujer asesinadita.

 

SZIbid., p. I86.
33Ibid., p. 250.

|4I

This comedy contains echoes of the sincerity and bold-
ness of Mihura’s former plays, but reveals as well a
willful gravitation toward the formulation of a con-
servative posture. Quite simply, Mihura desires to
please the public. V. Fernandez Asis states the problem
well when he observes that "su teatro no ha empeorado,
sino que se ha ajustado a maneras y moldes mas usuales.

No por eso es menos interesante su teatro; es, sen-

cillamente, menos original."34

 

34Review of Mihura’s "Sublime decision," in
Pueblo (Madrid), April II, I955, p. 8.

CHAPTER SIX

TWO WORLDS IN VITAL CONFRONTATION:
TRES SOMBREROS 0E COPA

Tres sombreros de copa is the play that first
and foremost has earned Miguel Mihura distinction in the
contemporary European theater. Its first staging in I952
created a sensation In the Spanish theater world and, as '
one translation followed upon another, Mihura was swiftly
catapulted into the international renown he currently
enjoys as one of Spain’s most outstanding humorists.

This play alone, according to.José Monleén, the

former editor of Primer Acto, would have sufficed to es-

 

tablish Mihura as an important author of contemporary

drama.I Ricardo Domenech values the comedy on a plane
equal in importance to the esperpentos of Valle-Inclén,
the gpeguerias of Ramon Gomez de la Serna, and'the en-
tire theater of Jardiel Poncela, as representing "la
aportacion espafiola a las mas brillantes vanguardias

europeas de este siglo."

I”La libertad de Miguel Mihura" uel Mihura,
ed. José Monleon (Madrid: Taurus, l965),

2”Tres sombreros de copa, 0 un esperpento
cordial, " Ibid., p. 98.

I42

I43

Drama critics first caIIed the play a work of the
avant-garde in the tradition of iViva Io imposible! and,
Ni ppbre ni rico. They expressed astonishment upon
learning that a comedy of such neoteric freshness could
have been written a full twenty years and fourteen days
before its premiere. Surprisingly, many of them declared
the play was still before its time. Even as late as I959,
Jorge Collar, writing for the elite literary periodical,
La estafeta literaria, averred that the play’s only de-
fect lay in the fact that it was still too modern.3

Immediately following the play’s estreno in Paris,
some six years after its appearance on the Spanish stage,
French reviewers accorded the work a similar recognition
as an avant-gardeproduction, noting that in its manus-
cript form, Mihura’s play was a forerunner in spirit to
the provocative absurdist theater of Ionesco. 'Writing
for Dimanche-Presse, one critic extolled the terrible
melancholy lying beneath its surface humor, and con-
cluded that the play was an extraordinary comedy, a

masterpiece of the modern theater.4 Eugene Ionesco
himself, often abrasive in his judgment of contemporary
writers, recognized the literary and intellectual ex:

cellence of the work and maintained that its irrational

 

- 3"Los tres sombreros de copa de Miguel Mihura,"
La Estafeta Literaria, No. l64 (March I, l959), I7.

4J.S. (sic.), "Buenos Dias, M. Labichef",
Dimanche-Presse (Paris), January 29, I959.

I44

style could invigorate the contradictions, the stupidity,
and the absurdity of the human spirit far better than
any argument of formal rationalism or mechanical dialec-
tics.5

The history of the gestation of Tres sombreros de
-pppg, alluded to earlier in Chapter Two, and documented
in detail by Mihura in his introduction to the l943 -
edition of the play, needs no further elucidation here.
It should suffice to say that for twenty years following
its composition, the play was faquella comedia que nadie

II

entendia, a work so inimitable, so surprisingly original,

that, as Mihura states, it "no solo desconcertaba a la
gente sino que sembraba el terror en los que la leian."6

The commercial theaters would not touch the play.
Promoters dared not risk their money on its outlandish
content. Many of Mihura’s close friends viewed the work
with suspicion and advised him to shelve it away for a
more opportune moment"

It was generally conceded that public taste was
to blame for the play’s long suppression.) Yet even with

the mellowing of public resistance -- refined, perhaps,

by the impact and aesthetics of Mihura’s previous plays

5Eugene Ionesco, "El humor negro contra la mixti-
ficacion," Primer Acto, No. 7 (March-April, I959), pp.
63364; see aTSOFIonesco’s prologue to Les trois chapeaux
cla ue, trans. Helene Duo and José Estrada (PaFTs:
L’Avant—scene; femina theatre, No. I9l).

6Mihura, Obras, p. 3|.

I45

and the disarming humor of La Codorniz -- the unproduced
play was still rejected by professional promoters and
might never have been staged were it not for the work of
a director named Gustavo Pérez Puig and two dozen univer-
sity students. The play waspremiered by the Teatro
Espahol.Universitario in the state-subsidized Teatro
Espafiol on the night of November 24, I952. There was
only one presentation, yet that single production was
enough to bring about an immediate repercussion. It
opened to Mihura the doors of the commercial theaters.
As Juan Emilio Aragonés wrote in I963:
Por fin comprendieron los avispados
empresarios algo que ni ellos ni los grupos
vocacionales habian entendido antes de I936:
que el humor de Mihura y los intereses del
negocio no son elementos antagonicos."7
Within a few months’ time, Tres sombreros de copa
was awardedcthe Premio Nacional de Teatro as the out-
standing play of the I953 season. Public and critical

favor was unanimous; the play’s acceptance was universal.

”Tres sombreros de copa," exclaimed José Monleon, "quedaré

 

en la historia del teatro espahol como una de las mejores
obras de nuestro tiempo."8
Wherein lies the greatness of this unusual play?

The most common approach to an understanding of the

 

7"Tres sombreros de copa," La Estafeta Literaria,
No. 28l (December 2|, I963).

8José Monleon, 0p. cit. (above, note I), p. 45.

I46

comedy’s literary value has been to point out its avant-
garde features of language and stage action. Eminent
drama critics and literary historians have frequently
mentioned the dislocated dialogue, the irrational rup-
ture of logical replies, and the elements of the absurd
"in human behavior contained within the play. While this
approach, soundly supported by able scholarship, enables
the student of modern Spanish theater to become acquainted
with thegeneral tone and tenor of the work, it does not
fully explain the poignant charm in the design and sub-
stance of the play. Were it to be judged only on the
content of its absurdist elements, Tres sombreros de cgpa
might well be classified, by comparison, as second in
importance to Mihura and Tono’s outstanding fiarce, Ni
pobre ni rice, or at best on a par with the equally
absurd and compelling drama by Mihura and Calvo Sotelo,

iViva Io imposible!

 

However, the play’s superiority to the former
productions is attested to by a dimension of meaning
that lies beyond the factors most commonly cited in
connection with its avant-garde character. It is the
purpose of this final chapter to probe into the essence
of this dimension, to examine the implications inherent
in the play’s conflict and to consider Mihura’s notable
achievement in giving valid characterization to-un-

common personalities.

I47

Adolfo Prego wisely observed that in this play
are contained ”todos los elementos que Mihura iré
desarrollando en Ias comedias siguientes.”9 We will
return often to this thought in our ensuing discussion,
believing with Adolfo Prego that in Tres sombreros de
'pppg one may find a compressed intimation of the author’s
later writings. Indeed, our appreciation for Mihura’s
first and perhaps best play is greatly enhanced due to
the discovery that in its conception a personal style is
born, a style that will gain in meaning and eloquence
in the realization of his future works.

Tres sombreros de copp is unlike any other
Spanish play of its time. It combines an intellectual
humor with a warm and Convincing sense of humanity. The
humor is sustained by inverisimilar dialogue and by
absurd action, while the vigorous sparkle of human ten-
derness in the substructure of the play is born of superb
characterization and upheld by an indefinable element of
poetic genius that generates credible spontaneity in an
incredible atmosphere.

The sophisticated form of humor centered in the
dialogue of the play may in the course of time become

dated and stale. Mihura believes it already has. ”El

tipo de humor que representa Tres sombreros de copa ya

 

9"El teatro de Miguel Mihura," Primer ACIO: NO- '0
(October, l959), I8.

I48

no tiene interés," he stated in a recent interview.'0

Clearly, the author values his later plays over Tres

sgmbreros de copa; he considers the famous production of

 

his youth to have been a mere experiment. Yet despite
Mihura’s personal opinion, the play continues to be ac-
claimed his greatest endeavor, and its dialogue is upheld
as an example of living, natural, and eXpressive language.
A new and ridiculous use of familiar topicos is
paramount to the humorous impact of this language.
Common expressions undergo a process of dislocation in
the service of revealing human needs and evoking chari-
table laughter over human follies. This characteristic
has been referred to as the happy blend of piruetas, or
the hilarious absUrdities of dehumanization, with pgp;

zadas tristes, "known by the catch in the throat and the

 

tear in the eye.”|| This may be what Francisco Sitjé has
in mind when he writes that ”Mihura consigue pasar Su
mercancia siempre de contrabando entre risas y bobadas.”'2

Ionesco has expressed this idea_in situating Tres som-

 

breros de cepg between the world of Charlie Chaplin and

 

IOPersonal interview with Mihura, June 9, l967.

IIDoris K. Arjona "Beyond Humor: The Theater of
Miguel Mihura," Kentucky Foreign Language Quarterly, VI,
No. 2 (I959), 5. - .

l2"Cincuenta afios de teatro proscrito," Insula,
No. I57 (December, l959), l6.

I49

the world of the Marx Brothers.|3 In his critical re-
view of the play, Ionesco explains his comment as
follows:
En esta obra se mezclan familiarmente
lo trégico a lo comico, el dolor a la
bufoneria, lo leve allo grave. Es una ex-
celente gimnasia intelectual. Exige un
pequeho esfuerzo, una cierta agilidad de
espiritu por parte del lector o especta-
dor: aprehender lo racional a través de
lo irracional: pasar de un concepto de la
realidad a otro; de la vida al sueho, del
suefio a la vida.I
Judging from the above quotations, one may con-
clude that the humor of Tres sombreros de cope occupies a
unique intermediate stagefibetween tragedy and comedy,
borrowing equally from sensations of heartbreak and
gracia, suffering and playfulness, derision and venera-
tion, as the pendulum of authentic human experience
shifts in constant motion from one pole to the other.
Fernandez Cuenca compares this oscillating
medium of humor to the blurring action of a camera lens;
deliberately placed before the true shape of things, it
distorts the vision of reality, thus forcing the imag-

ination to juxtapose the most dissimilar objects in

search for an apparent logic.'5 The sum and substance

 

I3Commented in Enrique Llovet, "El honor en el
teatro de Mihura," Miguel Mihura (above, note I), p. 89.

I4Ionesco,_gp. cit. (above, note 5), p. 64.
I5Carlos Fernandez Cuenca, review of Mihura’s

"El caso de la sehora estupenda," in Teatro (Madrid),
No. 5 (March, I933), p. 6.

|50

of this explanation suggests that Tres sombreros de copa
approximates in general the concept of surrealism.

It is in this connection that Juan Guerrero Zamora
identifies Mihura as the inaugurator of a new style of
humor in Spanish dramatic literature, a style based upon
the systematic rupture of commonplace notions in both
form and content, designed to reveal "Ia subyacencia
fatua, ridicula, aparencial, pueril y, al mismo tiempo,
tierna de nuestra existencia."l6

The following characteristic traits of the play
will serve to illustrate the surrealistic climate of the
dialogue.

Verbal distortions of logic are first noticeable
in the speech of the saintly Don Rosario, whose very name

connotes a spirit of beatific kindliness and adoration,

in keeping with his personality.'7 Rosario’s dialogue

 

|6Historia del teatro contemporaneo, III
(Barcelona: Juan Flors, I962), p. I73.

’ I7While Mihura’s thieves, street walkers, and
other lower class people are frequently given names
indicative of their profession or type, the author is
in general not prone to tag his characters with sug-
gestive appelations. However, Iges sombreros de cgpg
is atypical in this respect. Most of the leading
characters of the play have an ironical naming, parti-
cularly Don Sacramento, the puritanical formalist, and
Fanny, a common prostitute. Dionisio’s name is wholly
ironic; he is anything but bacchic in his conduct until
he meets Paula, of whom he becomes literally inebriated
as well as spiritually intoxicated with the joy of
unrestrained permissiveness. Paula, for her part, may
be aptly named for her aversion to marriage.

I5l

tends to transgress the laws of proportion and employs

what Guerrero Zamora terms visionary hyperbole.l8

Se ve la montaha, con una vaca en-
cima muy gorda, que, poquito a poco, se
esta comiendo toda la montaha.l

Dionisio continues this direction with a dialogue
that places greater stress on a distortion of logical
causality. In conversing with Buby, the colored
impresario, Dionisio asks:

-- iY hace mucho tiempo que es usted
negro?

-- No sé. Yo siempre me he visto asi
en la luna de los espejitos. .

-- iVaya por Diosf iCuando viene una
desgracia nunca viene sola! aY de
qué se quede usted asi? gDe alguna
caida?20

Occasionally the conversation contains a lack of
logic approaching the absurd, as exemplified by Madame
Olga, the bearded lady, in her explanation as to why

she does not shave:

Mi marido, monsieur Durand, no me lo
hubiese consentido nunca. Mi marido era
un hombre muy bueno, pero de ideas antiguas.
iEl no pudo resistir nunca a esas mujeres
que se depilan Ias cejas y se afeitan el
cogote! Siempre Io decia el pobre: "iEsas 2|

mujeres que se afeitan me parecen hombres!”

|8Juan Guerrero Zamora, Op. cit. (above, note
l6), p. I73. .

|9Mihura, Obras, p. 48.
2OIbid., p. 60.

2|Ibid., p. 73.

l52

The height of absurdity is reached when Don
Sacramento pronounces his many dictums concerning decent
conduct, among them the following:

Las personas decentes deben llevar

siempre patatas en los bolsillos, ca-
ballero... Y también deben2£levar ta-
fetén para Ias heridas....

Oftentimes the humor resulting from such strange
distortions approximates the kind of sick joke or black
humor that gained popularity in the western world about a
decade after the premiere of the play. It is similar,
in fact, to Mihura’s former writings for La Codorniz, in
which verbal sallies represent an attempt to attain a
superior, sophisticated attitude toward serious matters.
Two examples from the play are as follows:

-- éEntonces, toda su familia han sido

artistas de circo?

-- Si. Todos. Menos la abuelita. Como
estaba tan vieja, no aervia. Se caia
siempre del caballo.2

-- éY cuantos dientes tiene su sehora?

-- iOh, ella no tiene ninguno! Los
perdio todos cuando se cayO por
aquella escalera, y quede paralitica
para toda su vida, sin poderse le-

vantar de su silla de ruedas. iUsted

pasaré grandes ratos charlaggo con

este matrimonio encantador!

A common form of dislocated dialogue is the in-
verisimilar response to a simple question, or a follow-

up comment that thoroughly disarms the listener by its

 

ZZIbid., p. 94.

23Ioid., p. 58. 241bid.’ pp. 96-97_

I53

absolute irrelevance to the subject. This is the same
practice we noted in our discussion of the absurd in
Mihura and Tono’s Ni pobre ni rico. Evaristo Acevedo
characterizes this kind of humor as "preferentemente
intemporal y abstracto, cuya temética parece ir dirigida
contra la frase hecha; contra el tOpico linguistico; t..
obedece a una postura preconcebida\de ’evasién de
realidad’.’.’25 Six exanples illustrate its use in Ipeg
sombreros de copa:

-- aEs usted también artista?
-- Mucho.

-- gEra militar?
-- Si. Era militar.- Pero muy poco.
Casi nada.

-- Es un pobre. ,
-- gUn pobre?‘ gY cOmo se llama?
-- Nada. Los pobres no se llaman nada.

-- 3E5 usted un chico maravillosof

-- ;Pues usted tampoco es manca,
sefiorita.

-- iQué cosas tan especiales dice
usted’

-- iPues usted tampoco se chupa el
dedo!

-- gUsted también se baha con fre-
cuencia, senorita?

-- Si. Pero claro esta que no tanto
como su tia de usted.

-- ;Te casas, Dionisio!

—- Si. Me caso, pero poc.:o.26

 

5Teoria e interpretacién del humor espahol
(Madrid: Editora Nacional, l966), p. 248.

26Mihura, Obras, pp. 57, 58, 66, 74, 82, and 99.

|54

In addition to the projection of absurd notions
through dialogue, Mihura also introduces elements in the
action to advance the absurd vein of humor. Dionisio’s
struggle with a flea and his antics with the telephone
in Act One are the two most notable examples.

. Finally, the strange on-stage proliferation of
diverse physical objects contributes to formulate an
absurd climate. Act One prepares the spectator for the
gradJal increase of unusual things, beginning with
Dionisio’s black satin pajamas with a white bird em-
broidered on the chest, and Don Rosario’s discovery of
a man’s boot under the bed.

As the peculiar objects make their appearance,
none is forgotten or discarded; they remain on stage and
are utilized by various characters throughout the course
of action. The man’s boot, for instance, is used by
Dionisio to strike a match by later in Act One. Unlike
the rapid multiplication of articles in Ionesco’s theater,
these objects do not overwhelm the characters, nor do
they become predominant to the action, but their prog-
ressive accumulation does offer us a taste of the type

of proliferation that will charaCterize such plays as

 

Les Chaises and Le Nouveau Locataire.

Briefly mentioned, the curious items in Ipep
sombreros de cgpa include packages, bottles, coats, hats,
musical instruments, tin cans, paper, medals, four dead

rabbits, and four live dogs (concerning which Mihura adds

I55

”seria encantador que fueran‘ladrando."27 Add to this

El Odioso Sefior’s gesture in removing from his pockets
such articles as garters, stockings, a bouquet of flowers,
a box of candy, two sandwiches, and a baby rattle, and
one senses a clear resemblance of the action in this play
,to the spirit of‘a vaudeville act. This music hall cli-
mate is also furthered by the presence of El Coro de los
Viejos Extrahos, who sing three popular songs in Act Two.
To this atmosphere might be added the sound of music from
,a gramOphone, the frequent dancing about the stage, the
sudden entrances and the hurried exits, the abrupt ap-
pearance of El Alegre Explorador from beneath Dionisio’s
bed, and the equally surprising entrance of the Roméntico
Enamorado from inside Dionisio’s wardrobe.

It is no wonder that this play shocked the sensi-
bilities of many of Mihura’s most liberal professional
friends. Had it been permitted a premiere in I932, it
is possible that an audience of conservative Spanish
theatergoers-would have been brought to its feet, flus-
tered, indignant, shouting. One promoter of that time,
José Juan Cadenas, rejected the play on these very
grounds:

...es tan extraorinariamente nueva en su
forma y en su procedimiento que si la es-
trenase en mi teatro podrian ocurrir dos

cosas: o que tuviese gran éxito, o que el
publico quemase Ias butacas.

 

27%.! _p' 90' 28Ibidu, pr 30.

|56

Manolo Collado’s admonition to Mihura was perhaps very
wise, if not inspired: ”Es una comedia de humor tan fino
y tan nuevo que hay que preparar al publico para que sepa
lo que va a ver."29
Yet we should not forget that when this same play
was finally staged, it impressed Eugene Ionesco so
greatly that he recommended it to all audiences saying:
Esta desarticulacién aparente es, en el
fondo, un excelente ejercicio para enriquecer
la expresién teatral, multiplicar, variar los
dominios de la ’realidad’,.som§6idos a la ex-
ploraCIOn del autor dramatIco.
Ionesco joined many drama critics in lamenting that a
work of such fine artistic value could have been refused
a hearing by the wary Spanish impresarios of the I930’s
and l940’s.
Turning now from matters dealing with humor,
dialogue, and stage action, let us examine the subject
of character delineation, which in turn will lead us to
consider the essential meaning of the play.

A warm and humane undercurrent, visible in all

Mihura’s comedies, is especially apparent in Tres som-

 

breros de cope. Here the author shows an unusual feeling
and compassion for his fellow human beings. Though he
deplores intolerance and stupidity, his portrayal of.

intolerant and stupid people is never personal or bitter.

 

29Mihura, Obras, p. 3|.

3OEugene Ionesco, op. cit. (above, note 5), p. 64.

l57

Even the reprehensible natures of Don Sacramento and El
Odioso Sehor, as we shall shortly see, are sympatheti—
cally drawn.

This typically humane side of the author is a
quality that in Spanish is called ternura, the word most
,frequently used by critics when writing about Mihura’s

plays. Other epithets flavored by critics and spectators

 

alike include poesia, gracia, encanto, originalidad,

emocién, and espgntaneidad. These terms suggest the fact

 

that soft emotions and poetical tones give to Mihura’s
comedies a value beyond that of sheer entertainment.
One unusual feature of Tres sombreros de copa is
that none of the dramatis personae, excepting Paula,
conveys the impression of being an ordinary, typical,
average humanbeing. Yet all of them, including Paula,
have a common naturalness. iThey are all accurately
drawn, without being portrayed as having profound psy-
chological depth. 'They are logically built up, despite
a deliberate exaggeration for the sake of burleSque and
caricature in connection with the secondary figures.
And they are wholly believable within the context of
their intended roles. Enrique LlOvet observed that "en
Mihura no hay jamés una falta de IOgica en los caréc-
teres," an accurate statement especially when applied

to Tres sombreros de copa.3|

 

3'Review of Mihura’s "Ninette y Un sehor de
Murcia," in ABC (Madrid), September 4, I964.

l58

We will treat separately the five most important
personalities in the play, namely Dionisio, Paula, Don_
Sacramento, El Odioso Sefior, and Don Rosario, followed
by a brief comment on the functiOn of the music hall
characters as a collective group.

‘Dionisio, the young protagonist of the play, is
masterfully characterized through dialogue and action.
Central to the plot and to the significance of the play
is the stress Mihura places on his natural timidity and
his excessive malleability. Though unsettled and
shifting in his convictions, Dionisio is not depreciated
as an abulic soul. He possesses, in fact, a profound
will to emancipate himself from the bondage of social
conformity. He is a nonconformist in spirit, and thus
elicits an indulgent sympathy from the spectator who can
identify himself with Dionisio’s suppressed desire for
improvised adventure and lasting freedom, but senses as
well his debilitating allegiance to the degrading pre-
sumptions of the world.

Dionisio is committed to marry Margarita, a girl
whose nature is ”tan cursi, que el autor, avergonzado,

32
no se atreve a presentarla en escena en toda la obra."

His courtship has followed a standard pattern -- seven

years of solicitation, the gradual obtainment of false

 

32Miguel Mihura, "Autocritica," quoted in Fede-
rico Carlos Sainz.de Robles, Teatro Espafiol I952-53
(Madrid: Aguilar; I954), p. 92.

l59

illusions about happiness, and a romance inspired by
material conSiderations over love. His imminent wed-
ding represents the final and inevitable consignment of
his mortal life to the dull, pedestrian order of habit
and boredom.

. Mihura point up the human weakness of his pro-
tagonist by presenting him in the sad and constant
process of adopting the ideas of others to form a part
of his own susceptible personality. When Dionisio shows
his room to Paula, for instance, he acts toward her just
as Don Rosario had acted earlier toward him in showing
him the room. Paula expresses that she thinks it is
stupid to get married and Dionisio agrees, thus contra-
dicting his former belief. In the same way, he accepts
Don Sacramento’s judgment about him, namely that he is a
bohemian. This same personality trait in Dionisio is
also made clear in the episode of the broken carraca.

In Act Two he plays with the toy while talking with
Paula. It breaks and she repays it for him. In Act
Three this incident is repeated. But this time it is
Don Sacramento who breaks the toy, and Dionisio who
repairs it. I

Overall, Dionisio is so easily convinced, so
readily influenced by the opinions Of others, that he
is unable to master any situation. His frantic fumbling
with the telephone while Paula lies unconscious on the

floor is hilarious, but illustrates also the tragic

I60

helplessness and confusion of Dionisio and how his weak
character is torn between many allegiances. His struggle
to seize an alternative that could change his life for
the better results in a negative choice. He rejects the
personal liberation Paula represents for him in favor of
the puerile inertia that has thus far characterized his
vapid existence.

Dionisio enters the swift action of this play as
an utterly bored and boring individual. His life is
suddenly infused with interest, vitality, and charm, only
to be drained out as he voluntarily opts for the con-
tinuation of insipid boredom. This is a common motif in
Mihura’s plays. We have seen the theme of boredom opera-
tive in iViva Io imposiblef, wherein Palmira’s shift from
the stuffiness of a static Madrilenian existence to the
glamour of the circus milieu, then back again to spiritual
squalor, is similar to Dionisio’s escape from his true
dull nature into the magic of the music hall world.

The same theme is also present in El caso de la
mujer asesinadita, which concludes with the total and
absolute boredom of Lorenzo and Raquel after their stimu-
lating and successful murder of Mercedes. Boredom is the
key message in El caso de la sehora estupenda, a play in
which a woman engages in the dangerOus game of espionage
in an effort to escape from humdrumness, only to abandon
the spy ring as a goading sense of ennui again overtakes.

her. Boredom as a motivating force weighs heavy upon

l6l

A media luz los tres, accounting for Sebastian’s conduct
and his basic failure with women. Boredom actuates
Florita to enter a competitive man’s world in Sublime

_gecisiOn; it impels Juan to forsake a formal medical

 

career for the spontaneous pleasures of a simple life
in Mi adorado Juan. Extreme boredom lies at the base of
the frivolous and stupid IIVes of the adulterous couples

in La canasta, Mihura’s only fracaso rotundo in every

 

respect and his only unedited play. Because of boredom
Andrés visits Paris in Ninette y un sehor de Murcia, and
the delightful and hilarious satire surrounding Jerénimo
and Mercedes in Milagro_en casa de los LOpez is precisely
at the expense of their complete domestic boredom. To a
lesser degree this same theme is apparent in most of
Mihura’s other productions; it represents what Torrente
Ballester calls his abiding ”fastidio y disgusto por todo
lo que ahoga la espontaneidad.”33
Let us return to the character of Dionisio in

Tres sombreros de cop_, The melancholy that underlies
the play is partially due to his incapability to respond
to the world of love and adventure, despite his en-

lightened view that such a world offers him his only

true freedom:

 

33Gonzalo Torrente Ballester, "El teatro serio
de un humorista," Mjguel Mihura (above, note I), p. 79.

I62

3Y0 no me quiero casarf iEs una ton-
teriaf iYa nunca seria feliz! Unas horas
solamente, todo me lo han cambiado... Pensé
salir de aqui hacia el camino de la felici-
dad y voy a salir hacia el camino de la
noheria, y de la hiperclorhidria...34
In terms of Dionisio’s role, this is a play
about the initiation of a young man into self-realiza-
tion, and his resulting frustration in finding himself
inveterately bound to a social mold and to the medio-
crity of his own sorry existence.

The other aspect of a sad undercurrent in

Tres sombreros de copa is suggested by the character of

 

Paula. Paula also encarnates a profound human search
for happiness. In contrast to Dionisio’s passivity, her
life is characterized by motion. While Mihura offers no
physical description of the girl, other than to mention
that she is ”una maravillosa muchacha rubia, de dieci-

ocho ahos,”

we know by her energetic pace, her quick
replies, and her carefree candor that she represents a.
young person filled with the boundless joy of living.
As Torrente Ballester observes, Paula ”es una mujer que
vive, que concede a la espontaneidad, a la imaginaciOn,
a la alegria y a la melancolia un papel en su vida.”35

Paula cares nothing for social rank, marriage,

or responsibility. Her pleasures are the innocent joys

 

34Mihura, Obras, p. l03.

35Gonzalo Torrente Ballester, op. cit. (above,
note 33), p. 74.

I63

of infancy, like eating crabs at the beach and building
castles in the sand. She openly rebels against any
domineering force imposed on her life, as exemplified
by her unwillingness to heed the dictates of her colored
manager and obvious lover, Buby Barton. She is a woman
who allows her emotions free rein and her vitality full
expression. A product of the music hall, Paula is the
complete opposite of the stable and sterile world of
Dionisio’s fiancée. She is, in point of fact, a show
girl prostitute who, under the direction of her un-
scrupulous manager, exploits with her wiles and feigned
affections the wealthy strangers she meets.

Yet in her encounter with Dionisio, Paula sud-
denly wavers in her selfésufficiency and designed intent,
approaching for a fleeting moment the extraordinary sen-
sation of genuine love. The remarkable thing about her
contact with this unaffected emotion is that Mihura per-
mits her to enter the experience without caprice and to
depart from the same without sentimentality. Her final
toss of the three top hats at the close of the play
signifies that she too will return to the norms and
conventions of her own world, and life will go on just
as before.

Paula’s appearance, incidentally, like Maribel’s
in Maribel y la extraha familia, is funny and sur-
prising because the author has been preparing our

imagination to visualize a chaste Margarita; early

l64

allusions to Margarita’s saintliness, purity, and virtue
make Paula seem all the more interesting to the spec-
tator, as her professional interests are made manifest.
The contrast between Paula and Margarita remains impli-
cit throughout the play, for although Margarita never
appears in person, the kind of life she represents for
Dionisio is very clearly defined, a fact which makes more
keen our regard for the charming Paula.

Paula is the first in an impressive company of
Mihurian prostitutes. While a detailed account of
others of the author’s female characters who live on
the edge of society is most tempting, it must remain
outside of the context of this study. Suffice it to
say, Paula is a prototype for a number of Street girls

who make their appearance in various plays of a later

period. Most of them, like Paula, are happy and un-
complicated. Only one of them -- Nieves, the prota-
gonist of Una mgjer cualquiera -- is miserable and Ione-

 

some. Mihura’s wayward ladies are typically glad and
undoubtedly provide a special kind of thematic fas-
cination for their creator. His gallery of prostitutes
includes, in addition to Paula and Fanny of [peg
sombreros de cope and the aforenamed Nieves; Maribel,
Rufi, Pili, and Nini of Maribel y la extraha familia;
and Fany, Cloti, Pili, and Juli of Las entretenidas.

Ninette, a genuine representative of a popular Parisean

I65

milieu, might also be included. She appears in two
plays, namely Ninette y un sehor de Murcia and its

sequel, Ninette, Modas de Paris.

 

As was indicated earlier in our discussion of
the humor of this play, the freedom that Dionisio and
Paula discover is promptly annihilated by the repres-
sions and tabus of conventionalism. The inuring forces
brought to bear against their rebellion emerge from the
stratified and dogmatic codes for human conduct sym-
bolized in the appearance of Don Sacramento, Dionisio’s
future father-in-Iaw.

As his very name suggests, Don Sacramento rep-
resents the strict and binding covenant that governs an
obedient professor of decency. He opposes improvisation
of any kind and censures the mere appearance of devia-
tion from the prescribed pattern. Ricardo Domenech calls
him the symbol of unflinching puritanism, ”la rigidez
de unas costumbres preestablecidas, implacables, de las

”36 His inflexible system is

que es esclavo y defensor.
one of morality based on appearances and ”buenas cos-
tumbres”. Whatever runs counter to these frozen standards
is declared ”bohemio,” the same criterion endorsed by

Don Vicente in iViva Io imposible! and by the antagonist

Manriquez in Mi adorado Juan.

 

36Ricardo Domenech, op. cit., (above, note 2),
p. 99.

I66

Because Don Sacramento stands for the ridiculous
mechanization of habit in human relations, Mihura de-
picts him with burlesque exaggeration. Don Sacramento
is a complete caricature of mortal inanity, a smug and
pompous individual whose ludicrous, even absurd ideas
leave no doubt concerning the facet of life he typifies.
His brief appearance on stage in Act Three is unforget—
table. Sputtering confused and excited exclamations
about his daughter, he proceeds to define the norms of
prOpriety that must govern the actions of all "personas
decentes.” These include, among other things, hanging
family portraits and chromolithographs on the walls,
awakening every morning at six-fifteen, eating fried
eggs for breakfast, chatting and playing dOminoes with
a semi-toothless old man on Sunday nights, and, when in
the proper mood, taking two nights out a week for a wild
spree on the town, ”porque también el espiritu necesita
expansionarse.”37

This is the same kind of humdrum, familiar exis-

tence that Don Sabino rebels against in iViva lo im-

 

posiblef, the only difference being that in Tres som-

 

breros de copa banality is associated with the aristo-

 

cracy, while the tedium of Sabino’s world centers around

the middle class. This difference in class distinction

 

37Mihura, Obras, p. 96.

I67

is significant, for, as we see reiterated in Mihura’s
later plays, the author’s critical attitude toward in-
tolerance and heartlessness is not confined to a parti-
cular social level, but is directed at the stupidity of
the human condition in any rank or station.

Don Sacramento’s advice to Dionisio contains a
delightful admixture of topical and poetic expressions.
One of his utterances recalls Rubén Dario’s Sonatina:

La niha esta triste. La niha esta

triste y la niha llora. La niha esta
palida. iPor qué martiriza usted a mi
pobre niha?
These words he repeats several times. His short,

exclamatory sentences produce the effect of a broken

phonograph record or the prefabricated speech of.a

mechanical man. The intentional rephrasing of a familiar
verse contributes to the overall depiction of Don Sacra-
mento as a thoroughly unoriginal person, one who, like

Margarita in Ni pobre ni rico, must depend upon the

 

commonplace as the only avenue for forging a prescribed
pattern of existence.

Guerrero Zamora calls attention to the fact that
Mihura’s external symbol for fatuity in this play --
Don Sacramento’s fried eggs -- foreshadows Ionesco’s

emblem for the dullness of the unimaginative intellect --

 

38Ibid., p. 93.

I68

fried potatoes with bacon.39 Indeed, one might perceive
in the caricature of Don Sacramento a resemblance to the
grotesque mannikins who later make their appearance in
the exciting and original theater of the absurd.

A great deal like Don Sacramento is the hateful
old man whose lustful eye and financial eminence qualify
him as another type to be caricatured with relish. El
Odioso Sehor encarnates the incurable presumptuousness
born of material wealth. Torrente, touching briefly on
his importance to the play, makes the following valid
comment:

El sehor més rico de la provincia es

un perfecto imbécil, cuya vida ha cris-
talizado en formas fijas e invariables;

es un sefior a quien Ia circunstancia de

ser tan rico permite echar al aire ciertas
canitas, pero de modo tal, que dichas canas
parecen de cartén piedra. La palabra exacta
es ésta: el sehor mas rico de la provincia,
como el future e inevitable suegro de Dioni-
sio, se ha acartonado, y no concibe otro
modo degsnte de vivir que no sea el acartona-
miento.

El Odioso Sehor’s raison d’étre depends upon
money and sex. Domenech calls him "un capitalista

'..4I

erdtico. He determines to Use his money for new

conquests, paying no heed to his sullied reputation.

 

39Juan Guerrero Zamora, op. cit. (above, note
I6), p. I72.

40Gonzalo Torrente Ballester, op. cit. (above,
note 33), p. 73.

4'Ricardo Domenech, op. cit. (above, note 2),
p. 99.

I69

Mihura brings out the fact that he is a married man, a
point that makes him all the more reprehensible. With
regard to his libertinism, he is the antithesis of Don
Sacramento, for whom morality is a question of appearances
and the pundonor element is paramount. Yet both men
represent aspects of the same infected society; on the

one hand the leaden conventions that canker the mind,

on the other the graceless turpitude that debases the
spirit. I

Mihura’s characteristic pose is one Of detach-
ment from ethical questions, but in this play he reveals
himself to be a moralist. Through his deliberate cari-
cature of Don Sacramento and El Odioso Sefior, he becomes
a spokesman for individual freedom tempered with good
judgment and kindness as opposed to conformity to habits
that shackle the spontaneous spirit of man. He wisely
contrasts the wanton license of El Odioso Sehor with the
childlike candor of Paula, thus establishing a firm
moral position that rebellion and nonconformity become
odious when defiled by anarchy, but are worthy of emula-
tion when refined by seraphic joy.

It is this seraphic element in the heart of the
play that lends to the work its particular charm and
dignity. And no character functions more to establish
this tone of chaste innocence than the angelic Don

Rosario, the kindly and eccentric proprietor of the

I70

hotel in which all of the nonsense and the enchantment
of one night occur.

Don Rosario lends symmetry to a night of apparent
chaos. He has the first and the last lines in the play,
the one a greeting, the other a farewell. His solicitous
care for Dionisio throughout the long opening scene of
Act One establishes an atmosphere of delicate tone and
provides a visible demonstration of his generous affec-
tion and tenderness. His kindly speech infuses the
scene with a magical dimension, preparing the reader or
spectator for the dream-like transition into the sur-
realistic world of Act Two. This transition is softly
and subtly realized toward the end of the first act when
Don Rosario reappears to play a romance on his cornet in
an effort to lull Dionisio to sleep. While he plays,
absorbed in his art, a current of activity takes place
on stage, as Fanny, El Odioso Sehor, and Madame Olga
enter and speak and exit without the old man detecting
their presence. This aura of ternura is reaffirmed at
the close of the play with Don Rosario’s third and final
appearance. He now transports us back to the inevitable
reality of Dionisio’s commitment, effected in a beatific
climate of love and flowers.

Don Rosario’s speech and manners betoken a dis-
position of untroubled innocence. Yet his is a nature

anachronous to the times. His generation -- that of

,I7I

unselfish service and consideration for others -- is con-
trasted to the rising generation of exploiters like Buby
Barton and his carnival troupe, whom Don Rosario dis-
parages with the words, "son muy malos y todo lo re-
vuelven,” and whom Don Sacramento censures for their
being part of an age of ”grandes estafadores europeos
y vampiresas internacionales."42 Dionisio reminds Don
Rosario that his generosity is overdone and that his
guests take undue advantage of him. Rosario’s continual
improvements to the hotel without imposing an increase
in rates will bring him to financial ruin, Dionisio
observes. But Don Rosario is only concerned about the
physical comfort of his guests, whom he treats with in-
ordinate paternal love, as though they were his own
children:
Yo quiero ser un padre para todos, ya

que no lo pude ser para mi pobre niho.

iAquel niho mio que se ahogo en un pozof

Hizo ’pini’, y acabo todo....

The old man’s charm is also conveyed through his

frequent use of romantic, botanical epithets for Dionisio,

such as ”carita de nardo,” ”capullito de alheli,” "rosa
de pitimini," and "carita de madreselva,” as well as his
sentimental interest in Dionisio’s impending marriage.

His faulty vision, long white beard, rotundity, and

 

42Mihura, Obras, pp. 68 and 94.
43Ibid., p. 5|.

I72

nostalgic attachment for his old hotel contribute to

the endearment he imparts. Rosario is very much a fore-
token of Doha Vicenta and Doha Matilde, the sweet,
eccentric, and winsome old ladies in Mihura’s later

stage success, Maribel ygla estraha familia.

 

The exceptional group of people who comprise
"el raro ambiente de juerga” in Act Two warrants special
mention. They include dancers and actors, members
of a theatrical troupe on tour through the Spanish
provinces; members of the seaside resort town where the
play’s action takes place; and miscellaneous bearded
revelers of international stock. According to Mihura’s
statement, they form ”un coro absurdc y extraordinario.”44
Their actions are characterized by unrestraint, pretense,
and foppery. Instant joy is first on their agenda, and
in their eagerness to magnify an unbridled vitality,
they imbue the amoral atmosphere of Dionisio’s bedroom
with exotic and erotic tones.

Thematically they function as a radical contrast
to the placid monotony of Dionisio’s world, and as
such they sever his blind devotion to a false ideal.
For it is through Dionisio’s brief contact with this

bohemian element that he comes to detest the notion

of stringent uniformity in thought and in conduct;

 

44Ioid., p. 7|.

I73

through his brief acquaintance with Paula he comes to
realize how sad and ugly his fiancee.really is, with

her genial manners, her elegant dress, and her twelve
facial moles. The magnetism of a permissive climate

has shattered his orthodox faith in the supremacy of

conventionalism.

Yet at the same time this informal world of
Paula and her friends is a sham. Its singular allure-
ment is merely the carefree veneer that it flourishes,
the shallow coat of diversion and gladness it wears.
Buby reminds Paula that scruples and emotions must be
throttled, for the only reality of the music hall pro-
fession is hard work, deception, and exploitation. The
schematic and underdrawn personalities of those who
represent secondary roles in the action suggest the
vague and superficial value that really lies beneath
the plating of this free and indulgent milieu.

With the exception of Paula, the members of the
music hall retinue appear to be mad. Each one is a cari-
cature, displaying some facet of frivolity and irres-
ponsibility. Their demeanor and gestures betray the
hidden emptiness of their lives, the same kind of
vacuity and senselessness that Palmira discovers in the
circus world of ;Viva lo imposible!

In a manner similar to the play written in col-

laboration with Calvo Sotelo, the systematic skepticism

I74

of Miguel Mihura once again establishes a position of
intended ambiguity.5 Neither Dionisio’s world nor Paula’s
society offers the proper solution.- Rational clarifica-
tions are still wanting with the final toss of the three
top hats, and the spectator is obliged to choose the
order he most prefers. This kind of ambiguity, observes
José Monledn, is important in the poetics of Mihura’s
theater, for by it the author reveals "Ia ausencia de'
un orden l6gico, mostrando asi que los hechos no son
univocamente explicables."45 Monleén points out that
ambiguity becomes a positive value in Mihura’s produc-
tions,for with it the author replaces the sentimental
concept of the happy ending with a sense of true perspec-
tive, "sefialando la relatividad de ciertas apreciaciones
y la necesidad de afrontar con libertad Ia interpreta-i
cidn de las situaciones."'46
The-two worlds of Tres sombreros de copa are,
in reality, "estamentos constitutivos de una misma
sociedad.”47 In this sense their inevitable coexist-
ence is justified, but when love issues forth from the
interrelation of these two diametrically opposed concepts

of life, the relationship, as Ricardo Domenech states,

 

45José Monledn, op. cit. (above, note I), p. 47.
4516id., p. 49.

47RiCardo Domenech, op. cit. (above, note 2),
p. l00.

 

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I75

is "proscrito de antemano; un amor condenado por ese
engranaje," which is superior to both Dionisio and
Paula.48 Mihura symbolizes this fact in the transfer

of the dance hat from Paula to Dionisio, a hat too large
and unbecoming for him; and Paula's playful tossing of
Dionisio’s three formal top hats in Acts One and Three.
The dichotomy between the two worlds the hats represent
is also eXpressed by Buby as he says to Paula, "los
caballeros os quieren a vosotras, pero se casan con Ias

demas."49

Throughout Mihura's theater there is an implicit
critique and satire on the self-satisfied citizenry
and their materialistic attitude. In Tres sombreros de
gggg, as we have observed, the criticism is somewhat
strong, directed largely at Don Sacramento. Yet even
Don Sacramento, as a caricature of a mechanized mind,
is not denied some saving qualities as a human being;
in his love for Margarita and his devotion to routine,
we perceive a sympathetic side to his nature. While
Mihura defends the free and unconventional life, he is
unwilling to paint the world in terms of black and white.
Subtle areas of gray line both camps, as we have noted
in Dionisio's struggle to compromise with Paula’s en-

vironment and Paula’s attempts to bridge her world with

his.

 

48£QLQ- 49Mihura, Obras, p. 79.

l76

For, after all, the basis of Mihura’s world is
not moral concern, but rather humanity. It would be un-
fair to designate the author’s disesteem for artificial
living without pointing to his interest in the positive
worth of his charming characters and their personal
struggle to gain freedom from artificiality.

Fundamental to Tres sombreros de copa is a theme
that Mihura has carried in many of his subsequent plays,
namely that everyone must find his own role in life. In
Mihura's conception, this idea has no religious or philo-
sophical background; he simply presents a problem central
to the welfare of the individua|.himself. Dionisio’s
awakening reveals the high premium Mihura places on the
value of a human being's choice. Dionisio may have made
the wrong choice, but even in defeat his decision re-
affirms the authentic meaning in Don Sabino’s utterance
from Act Three of Lyiva Io imposiblef, that "la felici-
dad esté unicamente en ser lo que se ha querido ser."

Significantly, Tres sombreros de copa, like the
two former plays in Mihura’s avant-garde production,
lacks the optimistic view that love alone is a liberating
force. Dionisio’s desire to flee with Paula to London,
La Habana, or Chicago is the result of his long-sup-
pressed determination to break away from a narrow-
minded reality in order to reach a larger freedom.

Paula represents the catalyst that accelerates his

doubts concerning the value of his novia as a future

I77

wife.and companion. Yet love itself serves no real pur-
pose in effecting a new direction. .Dionisio fails, just
as in iViva lo imposible! Palmira failed in giving up
fede to have economic security by marrying Vicente, and
just as in Ni pobre ni rico Abelardo failed in his re-
lationship with Margarita.

Love leads not to fulfillment, but to fiasco in
iViva lo imposiblef, Ni pobre ni rico, and Tres som-
brerosgge copa. Thematically, the importance of love
sets these three plays apart as comprising a unique
category in the playwriting of Miguel Mihura. Indeed,
it is interesting to note that following his first pro-
ductions, Mihura adopts an entirely different point of
view; he portrays love as a positive attribute leading
to freedom and happiness.. El caso de la mujer asesina-
_tha is the first example of this new posture. It not
only exalts love as a positive value, but includes as
well the more fashionable "happy ending" that becomes
Vfrom this play forward a typical formula in almost all
of Mihura's productions. The author’s later optimistic
view could well be a gesture to his audience, for
Mihura was instantly willing to compromise a great deal
to public tastes in an effort to increase his personal
revenues.

Despite Mihura’s enormous popularity and cor-
responding commercial success since the year l952, not

at any later date in his writings has he created a play

I78

so full of poetic meaning, so full of life, as we find
in Dionisio's confrontation with one of the most impor-
tant moments of his life. .The world of play and fun

and shining happiness that he finds demonstrated in
Paula’s bohemian society occasions a human conflict that
is both touching and unforgettable. And it affords
'Mihura the Opportunity to be a spokesman for the com-
passion and tolerance that is most fundamental in his

personality and in his plays.

CONCLUSION

.The avant-garde theater of Miguel Mihura tes-
tifies to the effectiveness of applying sophisticated
humor to dramatic art. In his early contributions to
Spanish journals and to the Spanish stage, Mihura fos-
tered a new aesthetic posture in playwriting. Depar-
ting from the traditional lines of farce cultivated by
his immediate forerunners, he combined playful satire
and parody with a principle vital to the strength and
charm of all his subsequent writings; believing that
dialogue and stage action could be infused with the
magic of poetic tenderness and enlivened by a profound
sense of humanity, he produced four exciting plays
founded upon a sound literary base.

We have seen how Mihura's early dramatic writings
'merit high regard for a living and dynamic dialogue which
on occasion appears disorbited and absurd, but embodies
an internal logic designed to combat artificiality in
human discourse and action. We have attempted to show
that, central to the plot and design of each comedy
written between I932 and |945, is the author’s insis-

tence that a life of regulated conformity or spiritless

resignation to routine is wholly intolerable. Mihura

|79_

l80

stresses the_merits to be gained through a perSonal
emancipation from the constricting forces of habit,
social convention, and selfish pursuits. ‘He makes

clear this moral attitude by contrasting the narrow-
minded reality of an orthodox middle-class society to
the free-thinking expressions of an unconventional world.
The conflicts which result from this confrontation of
two opposing milieux and their corresponding characters
represent the essence of Miguel Mihura’s provocative
theater.

Our examination has revealed that Mihura favors
rebellion against the dehumanizing effects of intoler-
iance and self-satisfaction. While exhibiting a skep-
tical view toward pretense and mental laziness, he like-
wise affirms with positive force the importance of im-
buing the commonplace with a spirit of carefree imagina-
tion and creative adventure.

We have observed, however, that not all his major
characters achieve a coveted independence from the in-
hibiting forces of conformity; they succumb either to
the pressures of social living or to the weaknesses in-
herent in their own tractable natures. Boredom and
monotony prevail when they resist working out the free-
dom within their grasp. The few characters who attain
success in their quest for freedom do so, according to

Mihura’s position, at the sacrifice of fond allegiances

l8l

and commitments, and the repudiatiOn of established
values. Even the attribute of love is not a significant
factor in the personal struggle for self-mastery..

. Mihura’s message is basically existential in meaning; his
protagOnists must expand their freedom untrammeled by
codes or influences beyond the confines of their own dis-
positions.

We have endeavored to point out that the under-
lying literary substance of Mihura’s avant-garde theater
is further sustained by the author’s deliberate use of
incongruous verbal nonsense, a humorous resource he uti-
lizes to elucidate a serious problem in human commerce,
namely, the gradual disintegration of language into empty
formulas and senseless clichés. .

As a result of his penchant for promoting a
bizarre fonn of dialogue, Spanish critics have been wont
to label Mihura a precursor of the absurd in European
drama. In our own analysis of the playwright’s avant-
garde phase, we have indicated that this early theater
demonstrates the possibility of offering the spectator
or the reader a valid social or moral critique while
using the Same techniques later ascribed to the absurdist
writers; Mihura's plays thus inaugurate a special ap-
pearance of the sense of the absurd on thetSpanish stage,
the expressiOn of which is derived solely from language

and humor rather than from the philosophical posture

I82

that life itself is meaningless and the human condition
absurd.

We have accredited the playwright_with well-
deserved praise for the artistry, the originality, and
the spontaneity of his early productions. For one
familiar with Mihura's later writings, it is apparent
that the theater we have been discussing constitutes a
unique stage in the development of the author’s drama-
turgy.‘ The later comedies display much the same talent
and versatility, but they differ in their adoption of a
conservative pose that is notably absent in the first
four dramas.

'Mihura began his career well. He achieved in-
ternational recognition with an intellectually-oriented
avant-garde theater. Without the dignity and the repute
of his early plays, it is doubtful that Mihura would
rank uppermost as Spain’s leading dramatic humorist. In-
deed, that period of his life with which the present
study has been concerned becomes increasingly more sig-
nificant in the total evaluation of his literary career.
In the words of Don Antonio Valencia, Mihura created
therein "un rico mundo -- extrafio y vanguardista -- que
la maestria del autor nos ha hecho normal y admirable."l

_A

'Review of Mihura's play La bella Dorotea in
Marca (Madrid), October 27, l963, p. ll.

APPENDIX

PLAYS BY MIGUEL MIHURA AND DATES OF THEIR PREMIERES

I. iViva lo imposible! 0 el contable November 24, I939
de las estrellas
(Collaboration with Calvo Sotelo)

2. Ni pobre ni rico, sino todo lo December I7, l943
contrario
(Collaboration with Tono)

3. El caso de la mujer asesinadita February 20, l946
(Collaboration with Alvaro de
Laiglesia)

4. Tres sombreros de copa November 24, I952
(Written in I932)

5. El caso de la sefiora estupenda February 6, l953

6. Una mujer cualquiera April 4, I953

7. A media luz los tres November 25, I953

8. El caso del senor vestido de April l7, l954
violeta

9. Sublime decision April 9, I955

l0. La canasta (unpublished) December I, I955

ll. Mi adorado Juan January ll, I956

l2. Carlota April l2, I957

l3. Melocoton en almibar November 20, I958

I4. Maribel y la extrafia familia September 29, l959

l5. El chalet de Madame Renard November 23, l96l

l6. Las entretenidas September l2, I962

l83

l7.
‘8'
I9.

20.
2|.
22.

l84

La bella Dorotea
Ninette y un senor de Murcia

Milagro en casa de los Lopez

La titera
Ninette, "Modas de Paris”

La decente

October 25, I963

September 3, l964

September 24, I964
(Barcelona)

February 5, l965
(Madrid)

March l5, l965

September 7, I966

September 4, l967

BIBLIOGRAPHY‘
List of Books, Articles, and Plays Consulted

Acevedo, Evaristo. Teoria e interpretgcién del humor
espafiol. (Coleccion'flCritica de las artes.
Madrid: Editora Nacional, I966.

Aguirre Bellver, Joaquin. ”Miguel Mihura, 0 el grillo
en el hogar,” Madrid (November 25, l96l), pp. 9-l0.

Alvaro, Francisco. El es ectador y la critica (Series
”El teatro en Espafia,’ Afios I-VIII.) Valladolid:
Edicién del autor, l958el965.

Aragonés Daroca, Juan Emilio. ”Miguel Mihura," X V

afios de teatro espanol en doce autores (Radio
Nacional Espafiol lecture.) March, l964.

Arjona, Doris K. ”Beyond Humor: The Theater of Miguel

Mihura," KentuckyiForeign Language Quarterly, VI,
No. 2, (I959), 63-68.

. ”The Spanish Theatre of Today," Educational
Theatre Journal, XI (I959), 263-270.

 

Armando Gomez, César. "El dificil humor," Indice
(Madrid), No. 49 (March l5, I952), 6.

Beardsley, Jr., Theodore S. ”The Illogical Character
in Contemporary Spanish Drama," Hispania, XLI,
No. 4 (December, I968), 445-448. ,

Berenguer Carisomo, Arturo. El teatro de Carl s
Arniches. Buenos Aires: AteneoIbero-Americano,
l937.

Blistein, Elmer M. Comedy in Action. Durham, North
Carolina: Duke University Press, l964. '

Boring, Phyllis Zatlin. "The Bases of Humor in the

Contemporary Spanish Theatre" (Unpublished Ph.D.
thesis, University of Florida, I965).

l85

l86

Castellano, Juan R. ”El teatro espafiol desde I939,”
Hispania, XXXIV, No. 3 (August, l95l), 240-244.

Chabés, Juan. Literatura espafiola contemporépea.
La Habana: Editorial CUlturaI, I952.

Clocchiatti, Emilio. "Espafia y su teatro contemporéneo,”
Insula (Madrid), No. 206 (January, I964); also in
Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos (Madrid), No. I79
(November, I964), 29l-297. , .

Coe, Richard N. "Eugene Ionesco: The Meaning of Un-
Meaning," Aspects of Drama and the Theatre. Sydney
(AustraliaJ:Sydney University PressjflT965, 3-32.

Corrigan, Robert W. (ed.). Comedy: Meaningiand Form.
San FranciSco: ChandlerTPublishing Company, l965.

DeCoster, Cyrus C. ”The Theatrical Season in Madrid
I954-55,” Hispania, XXXIX, No. 2 (May, I956),
I82-l85. .

 

Deuser, Barbara Ann. "Humor and Satire in the Plays of
Miguel Mihura” (Unpublished Master's thesis, Pennsyl-
vania State University, I962).

Diaz de Escovar, Narciso, and Francisco P. Lasso de la
Vega. Historia del teatro espafiol, I & II.
Barcelona: Montaner y Simon, I924.

Dieterich, Anton. "Literatur unter Franco; Das'Theater;"
Wort und Wahrheit (Vienna), No. 2 (February, I960),
lll-lIS.

Diez-Canedo, Enrique. "Panorama del teatro espafiol desde
|9I4 hasta I936,” Hora de Espafia (Madrid), XVI
(April, I938), |3-52.

 

Domenech, Ricardo. ”Reflexiones sobre la situation del
teatro," Primer Acto (Madrid), No. 42 (I963), 4-8.

Esslin, Martin. ”The Theatre of the Absurd,” Tulane
Drama Review, IV, No. 4 (May, I960), 3-l5.

. The Theatre of the Absurd. New York: Anchor
Books, I96l. ,

Fernandez de la Vega, Celestino. O segredo do humor.
Vigo: Editorial Galaxia, I963.

Fernandez Florez, Wenceslao. "El humor en la literatura
espafiola" (Discurso leido ante la Real Academia,
May, I945), Obras completas, Vol. V. Madrid: Aguilar,
1950, 979-:010.

I87

Florez, Rafael. Mio Jardiel:bio rafia de un hombre
gue esta debajo de un almendro en flor: Enri ue
Jardiel Poncela. Madrid: Biblioteca Nfieva, l

. "Jardiel Poncela y su cuaderno de bitacora,'
%a’ Estafeta5 Literaria (Madrid), No. 364 (February
5 I967),

 

Fraile, Medardo. ”Twenty Years of Theater in Spain,"
trans. Mildred Boyer, Texas Quarterly, IV, No. l
(Spring, I96l), 97-l0l.

Gomez de la Serna, Ramon. ”Prélogc," Obras com letas
de Enrique Jardiel Poncela, 1. Barcelona: gHR, 7-l7.

Gonzalez Ruiz, Nicolas. La cultura espafiola en los
ultimos veinte afios: ET'teatro.‘Madrid: Instituto
de Chltura Hispénica, I949.

 

Guernser, Jr., Otis L. The Best Plays of l964- I965.
New York: Dodd, Mean, and Co. I965:

Guerrero Zamora, Juan. Historia del teatro contem-
poraneo, III. Barcelona: UUan Flors, I962.

Halcomb, George Lawrence. ”The Theater in Spain Since
I939; (Unpublished Ph. D. thesis, University of Texas,
I949

Hammarstrand, Robert Edward. ”The Comic Spirit in the
Plays of Enrique Jardiel Poncela" (Unpflblished Ph.D.
thesis, University of California, Berkeley, l966).

Haro Tacglen, Eduardo. "La profecia esta prohibida"
(Notas en torno a Jardiel Poncela), Teatro (Madrid),
No. 4 (February, I953), 33-34.

Ionesco, Eugene. Theatre, 1. Paris: Gallimard, I954.

. ”El humor negro contra la mixtificacién,"
Primer Acto, No. 7 (March -April, I959), 63- 64.

 

 

. "The Avant- -garde Theatre," WOrld Theatre, VIII,
No. 3 (Autumn, I959), l7I-202.

 

. ”The Tragedy of Language, " trans. Jack Undank,
Tulane Drama Review, IV, No. 3 (March, I960), l0-l3.

 

. Notes and Counter Notes, trans. Donald Watson.
New York: rove ress, l .

 

Jardiel Poncela, Enrique. "Lectura de cuartillas,"
Tres comedias con un solo ensayo. Madrid: Biblioteca
Nieva, I934, l3- 66}

I88

. . ”La ultima entrevista,” Teatro, No. 4, (Feb-
ruary, I953), 29- 32.

 

. Obras completas, I. Barcelona: AHR, I963.

 

 

. Obras teatrales escogidas. 'Madrid: Aguilar,
l964. ,

”La obra teatral de Enrique Jardiel Poncela.” Anon.
Teatro, No. 4 (February, I953), 37-44.

Lacosta, Francisco C. "El humorismo de Enrique Jardiel
Poncela,” Hispania, XLVII, No. 3 (September, I964),
SDI-506. ,

 

Lain Entralgo, Pedro. ”El humor de La Codorniz, ” La
aventura de leer. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe-Afistral,
I946, T20-l33.

Lozano, J. ”:EI circo! Historia, andanzas y aventuras,”
Teatro, No. I9 (May-August, I956), 29-33, 73.

Marquerie, Alfredo. ”Sobre la vida y la obra de don
Carlos Arniches " Cuadernos de Literatura Contem-
poranea (Madrid), Nos. 9-I0 (I943), 249-255; also
in Primer Acto, No. I4 (May- June, I960), ll-l3.

. En la jaula de los leones: Memorias y critica
teatral. Madrid: EdicionesEspafioIas, I944.

 

. El teatro de Jardiel Poncela. Bilbao:
Ediciones de Conferencias y Ensayos, I945.

 

. ”Nuestros autores de postguerra," Teatro
(Madrid), No. l9 (May -August, I956L ll-l

 

. ”El circo y su festival mundial en Espana,”
Teatro (Madrid), No. 2| (January-March, I957).

 

.. Veinte ahos de teatro en Espafia. Madrid:
Editora—Nacional, I959.

. Alfonso Paso y su teatro. Madrid: Escelicer,
I960.

. ”Jardiel y el Jardielismo," La Estafeta
Literaria (Madrid), No. 3I2 (February 27, I965),
I8-T9.

Marsillach, Adolfo. iSiIencio...se rueda.. With a
preface by MiguelMihura ( T’CoTeccién voz- imagen,
Vol. I), Barcelona: AYMA, I962.

 

I89

. Mihura, Miguel. La Ametralladora. (San Sebastian,
I936-I939).

. La Codorniz. (Madrid, |94I - March 26, I944).

 

. "Conocete a timismo; cada.escritor es A
chtica consigo,” La Estafeta Literaria (Madrid),
September 25, I944.

 

. ”Un sistema olvidado,” El Correo Gallego
(Santiago), April 3, I949. -

 

and Joaquin Calvo SOtelo. iViva lo imposible!
o‘ET contable de estrellas. Madrid: EdiCTEn de los
autores, I95I. '

 

. ”gQuién es el verdadero autor de una peli-
cula?,” Indice (Madrid), April l5, I952.

 

. ”Cartas de Mihura," Foco (Madrid), June I4,
I952; June 28, I952; July l2, I952; July 30, l952;
August 9, I952.

 

. ”Decorado Onico," Informaciones (Madrid),
April 4, 1953.

 

. ”El teatro de Mihura visto por Mihura,"
Primer Acto (Madrid), No. 3 (Summer, I957), l2.

 

 

. Les trois chapeaux claque, trans. Helene
Duc and José Estrada. Paris: ”L’Avant-scene,” l959.

 

. Obras completas. Barcelona: AHR, I962.

 

 

. Carlota. ed. Edith B. Sublette. New York:
Odyssey, I963.

 

. Mi adorado Juan. ed. J. V. Falconieri and
A.M. Pasquariello. New York: Blaisdell, l964.

 

 

‘. Miguel Mihura: Tres sombreros de copa, La
bella Dorotea, Ninette y un sefior deFMUrcia. ed.
‘José Monleon. Madrid: Taurus, I965.

 

. ”El seductor" (Pequefia alta comedia en un
acto), La Estafeta Literaria (Special issue), I965.

 

. Obras ("Coleccion Teatro”), Nos. 4|, 6|, 68,
92, ll2, Il6, I28, I49, 2|0, 233, 252, 334, 369,
4|5, 462, 479, 484, 542. Madrid: Ediciones Alfil-
Editorial Escelicer.

 

I90
. Teatro selecto de Miguel Mihura. Madrid:
'Escelicer, l967.
Molero Manglano, Luis. "El teatro espafiol desde I939

hasta nuestros dias," La Estafeta Literari (Madrid),
No. I63 (February I5, I959), 9-IU-

Monner Sans José Maria. Introduccion al teatro del
siglo XX. Buenos Aires: CoTUmEa, I954. ' '

Mufioz, Matilde. Historia del teatro en Espafia. Vol. I.
rev. by AlvaroTRetana TwCoIeccian Jarife”) Madrid:
Tesoro, I965.

Mufioz Seca, Pedro. Obras completas. 7 vols. ed. José
Maria Bernéldez. Madrid: FAX, |954.

Muur, Ingeborg. "Miguel Mihura’s Teater” (UnpubliShed
thesis. Oslo, Norway, l966).

Nerva, Sergio. "El teatro en los ultimos 25 afios "
Espafia (Tangier), No. 8486 (October 25, I963), l9.

Neville, Edgar. "Notas para una ficha," Teatro de Ed ar
Neville. Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva, I955 7-I9.

Paso, Alfonso. ”Humor y deshumanizacion," Primer Acto
(Madrid), No. l8 (December, I960), 6.

 

. "Mufioz Seca: El Astracén, género de abrigo,"
La Estafeta Literaria (Madrid), Nos. 282-283 (January
4-l8, I964), 54—55.

 

Pérez Cobas, Patricio. "El teatro de Miguel Mihura”
(Unpublished thesis. Madrid, I965).

Pérez de Ayala, Ramon. Las méscaras; ensayos de critica
teatral, II. Madrid:Imprenta CIESica ESpafiola,
l9l7-l9l9.

Pérez Minik, Domingo. Debates sobre el teatro espafiol
contemporaneo. Santa Cruz, Canary Islands: Goya,
I953.

. Teatro europeo contemporéneo: Su libertadqy
compromisos. Madrid: Guadarrama, T96l.

. "Itinerario patético de una generacion de
dramaturgos espafioles," Insula (Madrid), Nos. 224-
225 (July-August, I965), 3, 36.

 

Prego, Adolfo. ”El teatro de Miguel Mihura " Primer
Acto (Madrid), No. l0 (October, I959),'i7‘T§'—- .

I9l

Ramos, Vicente. Vidagyyteatro de Carlos Arniches.
Madrid: Alfaguara, I966}

Rodriguez, Miguel Luis. "El drama espafiol contemporéneo,”
Indice (Madrid), No. 99 (April, I957), I2; reprinted
in Indice, Nos. |54-I56 (November-December, I96l-
January, I962), 67- 68.

Rof Carballo, J. et al. El teatro de humor en Espafia.
Madrid: Editora NacionaT, l966—

Rozas, Juan Manuel. ”El teatro en Madrid en la temporada
I964-65," Segismundo (Madrid), 11 (I965), 399-4l9.

 

Sainz de Robles, Federico Carlos. "Estado del teatro
espanol en I934, ” prologue to Obras completas de
Alejandro Casona, 1. Madrid: Aguilar, T954.

. Teatro espafiol. I7 vols. } Madrid: Aguilar,
I949-|966.

 

. Ensayo de un diccionario de la literatura, 11,
3rd ed. Madrid: Aguilar, I964. 7 T

Salinas, Pedro. Literatura espanola siglo XX. Mexico:
Séneca, I94l.

Sastre, Alfonso, ”Le théatre espagnol contemporain,"
Preuves (Paris), No. I23 (May, l96l), 25- 28.

Schrbgendorfer, Konrad. ”Spanische Dramatik der Gegen-
wart,” Maske und Kothurn (Vienna), No. l (I959),
l9-22.

 

Server, Alberta Wilson. ”Notes on the Contemporary
Drama in Spain,’ 'Hispania, XLII, No. l (March, I959),
56- 60.

Sitjé Principe, Francisco. "Tres notas SObre teatro
contemporéneo, " Teatro (Madrid), No. 20 (September-
December, l956), 8-I0.

. "Cincuenta anos de teatro proscrito," Insula
(Madrid), No. I57 (December, I959), l5-l6.

 

Soldevila Durante, Ignacio. "Sobre el teatro espafiol
de los ultimos veinticinco afios, " Cuadernos
Americanos (Mexico), CXXVI No. I (January-February,
I963), 256-289.

 

Solsona Braulio. "Le théatre en Espagne, " La Revue
Théatrale: Revue Internationale du Théat tre (Paris),
VIII, No.724 (I953), 28- 32.

I92

Torrente Ballester, Gonzalo. "Cincuenta afios de teatro
espafiol y algunas cosas mas," Escorial: Revista de
Cultura y Letras (Madrid), No. IOTAugust, I94l),
2534278. .- .

 

. Teatro espafiol contemporéneo. Madrid:
Guadarrama, I957.

. Panorama de la literatura espafiol§:cont§mpoq
rénea. 2nd ed. Madrid: Guadarrama, l96T.

. "Notas criticas a la temporada madrilefia,"
Primer Acto (Madrid), No. 47 (I963), 48-49.

Trulock, Jorge C. ”Teatro de humor: Miguel Mihura,"
La Estafeta Literaria (Madrid), No. 29l (May 9,
I964), 25.

Valbuena Prat, Angel. Historia del teatro espafiol.
Barcelona: Noguer, I956] '

Vannier, Jean. "A Theatre of Language " trans. Leonard
C. Pronko. Tulane Drama Review, VII, No. 3 (Spring,
I963), I80-I86.

Vazquez Zamora, Rafael. ”Tipos y escenas de Arniches,"
Insula (Madrid), No. 8| (I952), l2.

Von Horst, Antlitz. ”Enrique Jardiel Poncela und das
moderne spanische Theater," Maske'und Kothurn
(Vienna), I956, 55-77.

 

Wegener, Adolph H. ”The Absurd in Modern Literature,"
Books Abroad (Spring, l967), I50-l56.

 

. ”Observations on the Theatre of the Absurd"
(Unpublished paper presented at the East-West
Center, University of Hawaii, December, l967).

Wellwarth, George E. The Theater of Protest and Paradox:
Developments in the Avant-Garde Drama.INew VorF: New
York University Press, I964.

Wofsy, Samuel A. ”La calidad literaria del teatro de
Miguel Mihura,” Hispania, XLIII, No. 2 (May, I960),
2|4—2l8. -

ZOfiiga, Angel. Una historia del cine, II. Barcelona:
Destino, I948.

. "Un corazon de Jardiel," Teatro (Madrid),
No. 4 (February, I953), 34-35.

 

 

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I93
List of Reviews Consulted

(The numbers in parentheses correspond to the titles of

Mihura's plays listed in the Appendix.)
Adrio, Manuel. (ID) ABC (Madrid), February 6, I965, 75.
Anon. (3) Marca (Madrid), February 2|, I946, 4.

Aragonés, Juan Emilio. (4) La Estafeta Literaria
(Madrid), No. 28l, December 2|, I963.,

. (l5) ibid., No. 232, January I, I962, IS.

 

. (l7) ibid., No. 278, November 9, I963, 9.

 

. (l9) ibid., No. 3l2, February 27, I965,-22.

 

. (20) ibid., No. 3I3, March I3, I965.
Ardila. (I4) Pueblo (Madrid), September 30, I959, 20.

 

Baquero, Arcadio. (I2) El Alcézar (Madrid), April I3,
I957, 24. .

. (I3) ibid., November 2|, I958, I6.

 

. (l4) ibid., October I, |959, 24.

 

. (I5) ibid., November 24, I96I, 28.

 

. (I6) ibid., September I4, I962, 2i.

 

. (I7) ibid., October 26, I963, 3|.

 

. (I8) Ibid., September 4, I964, IO.
. (I9) ibid., February 6, I965, 29.

 

. (20) ibid., March 4, I965, 29.

 

Berger, Pierre. (4) Paris Journal, February 2, I959.
Calvo, Luis. (5) ABC (Madrid), February 7, I953, 29.
. (6) ibid., April 5, I953, 49.

 

Castro, Cristobal de. (2) Madrid, December I8, I943, 6.

. (3) ibid., February 2|, I946, 4.

 

I94

Collar, Jorge. (4) La Estafeta, iteraria (Madrid), No.
I64, March I, I959, l7. ‘** '

. (9) Arriba (Madrid), AprII-IO, l955, 25.

 

Corbalan, Pablo. (I7) Informaciones (Madrid), October
26, I963, 7. 'I

,' (I8) ibid., September 4, I964, 7._
Cordoba. (6) Pueblo (Madrid), April 4, l953, I5.

Cotta Pinto, Rafael. (l4) La Estafeta LiterarLg (Madrid),
No. I78, October I, I959, 24. ‘—

Cueva, Jorge de la. (3) l§_(Madrid), February 2|, I946, 5.
. (4) ibid., November 25, I952, 7.

 

d'Etchevers, J. (l4) La C6té Libre (Paris), November
23, I960.

Diez Crespo, Manuel. (2) Arriba (Madrid), December I8,
l943, 4. "

. (3) ibid., February 2|, I946, 4..

 

 

 

. (I5) Primer Acto (Madrid), Nos. 29-30,
December l96l - January I952, 9.’* a! -

 

Domenech, Ricardo. (I9) Primer Acto (Madrid), No. 62,
I965. '

Enriquez, Mateo. (3) Ecclesia (Rome), August 6, I946.

 

Fernandez de Asis, V. (2) Pueblo (Madrid), December
I8, l943, 2.

. (3) ibid., February 2|, I946, 4.

 

. (4) ibid., November 25, I952, II.

 

. (5) Ibid., February 7, I953, 6.

 

. (6) ibid., April 6, I953, l0.

 

. (7) ibid., November 27, I953, I3.

 

. (8) ibid., April I9, I954, 6.

 

. (9) ibid., April II, I955, 8.

-—-——

 

I95

. (ID) ibid., December 2, I955, I3.

 

(II) ibid., January I2, I956, II.

 

(I2) ibid., ApriI I3, I957, 2|.

 

(I3) ibid., November 2|, I958, I4.
. (I5) Ibid., November 25, I96I, 26.

 

Fernandez Cuenca, Carlos. (4) Teatro: Revista inter-
Qacional de la escena (Madrid), No. 3, January,
I953, 7. .

(5) ibid., No. 5, March, I953, 5-6.

 

. (6) ibid., No. 7, May, I953, 6.

 

Fernandez-Santos, Angel. (l4) Indice (Madrid), No. I32,
January, I960, I8.

 

 

. (l8) Primer Acto (Madrid), No. 56, September,
I964, 69-7I. .

(2I) ibid., No. 82, I967, 78.

 

Fragoso. (l6) Marca (Madrid), September l3, I962, I0.

Garcia Luengo, Eusebio. (4) Indice (Madrid), December
I5, I952. “ '

. (8) ibid., May-June, I954.

 

Garcia Pavon, Francisco. (I7) Arriba (Madrid), October
26, I963, 23.

. (I8) ibid., September 5, I964, 23.

 

. 020) ibid., March 4, I965.

 

. (2I) ibid., September 8, l966, 2|.

 

Gomez Picazo, Elias. (4) Madrid, November 25, I952, 8.
. (5) ibid., February 7, I953, I3.

 

. (6) ibid., April 6, I953, l3.

 

. (7) ibid., November 26, I953, 4.

 

. (8) ibid., April I9, I954, l2.

 

I96

. (9) ibid., April II, I955, I4.

 

(l0) ibid., December 2, I955, l3.

 

. (II) ibid., January l2, I956, I4.

 

.. (l2) ibid., April I3, I957, l5.
. (I3) ibid., November 2|, I958, IO.

 

. (I4) ibid., September 30, I959, I7.

 

. (I5) ibid., November 24, I96I, I8.

 

(l6) ibid., September I3, I962, 2|.

 

. (l7) ibid., October 26, I963, 6.

 

Gonzalez Ruiz, Nicolas. (5) lg (Madrid), February 7,
I953, 7.

. (7) ibid., November 26, I953, 2.

 

(8) ibid., April I8, I954, 7.

 

(9) ibid., April l0, I955, I5.

 

. (IO) ibid., December 2, I955, 7.

 

. (I2) ibid., April I3, 6.

 

. (I3) ibid., November 2|, I958, II.

 

. (I4) ibid., September 30, I959, 8.

 

. (I6) ibid., September I3, I962, 23.

 

. (l7) ibid., October 26, I963, 34.

 

. (l9) ibid., February 6, I965, 35.

 

. (20) ibid., March 4, I965.

 

Guerrero Zamora, Juan. (9) El Alcézar (Madrid), April
II, I955, 8. >

. (IO) ibid., December 2, I955, 8.

 

. (ll) Arriba (Madrid), January l2, I956, l5.

 

Guimaud, Jean. (4) gPourquoi pas? (Paris), May 27, l960.

I97

Haro Tecglen, Eduardo. (4) Informaciones (Madrid),
November 25, I952, 5.

 

 

. (5) ibid., February 7, I953, 7.

Interino. (I5) Informaciones (Madrid), November 24,
l96l, 6.

Jenabe. (6) lg_(Madrid), April 5, I953, 7.

Juanes, José'de. (l6) Arriba (Madrid), September I3,
I962, 23. “"“

J. S. (4) Dimanche-Presse (Paris), January 29, I959.

 

Laborda, Angel. (I2) Informaciones (Madrid), April
l2, I957, 8.

. (I4) ibid., September 29, I959, 8.

 

. (I9) Ibid., February 5, I965.

 

Lopez Sancho, Lorenzo. (2I) ABC (Madrid), September 9,
I966, 6I. .

Luis Alvarez, Carlos. (I8) ABC (Madrid), September 4,
I964, 5l. '

Llovet, Enrique. (l7) ABC (Madrid), October 26, I963,
79-80. ' '

. (I8) ibid., September 4, I964.

 

. (20) ibid., March 4, I965.

 

Marquerie, Alfredo. (3) ABC (Madrid), February 2|,
I946, 2|.

-. (8) ibid., April l8, I954, 44.

 

. (9) ibid., April I0, I955, 40.

 

. (l0) ibid., December 2, l955, 43.

 

. (II) ibid., January I2, I956, 45.

 

. (l2) ibid., April I3, I957, 6I.

 

. (I4) ibid., September 30, I959, 59.

 

. (I5) ibid., November 24, I96I, 75.

 

I98

. (I6) ibid., September l3, I962, 49.

 

 

. (l7) Pueblo (Madrid), October 26, I963, 29.
. (I8) ibid., September 4, I964, II.

 

. (I9) ibid., March 4, I965, 22.

 

. (20) Pueblo (Madrid), March 4, I965, 22.

 

. (2|) ibid., September 8, I966, 24.

 

. (22) ABC (Madrid), September I4, I967.

 

Martinez Tomas A. (I9) La Vanguardia Espafiola
(Barcelona), September 25, I964, 32}

 

Mihura, Miguel. (”Autocritica” 5) ABC (Madrid),
February 6, I953, 32. '

. ("Autocritica” 7) ibid., November 25, I953, 4l.

 

. ("Autocritica" 8) ibid., April I7, I954, 46.

 

. ("Autocritica” 9) Ibid., April 9, I955, 56.

 

Molero Manglano, Lu
I

((3) La Estafeta Literaria
(Madrid), No. .

is.
57, December 6, I958, IO.
. (I4) ibid., No. I79, October I5, I959, I4-I5.

 

Monleén, José. (l2) Primer Acto (Madrid), No. 2, May,
I957, 57.

 

. (I5) ibid., No. 28, November I96I, 49.

 

Montero Alonso, José. (I9) Madrid, February 6, I965, 8.
. . (I9-20) ibid., January 6, I965, ID.
. (20) ibid., March 4, I965, 8.

 

. (2I) ibid., September 8, I966, 7.

 

Mora, Jesus. (I8) Madrid, September 4, I964, II.

Morales de Acevedo, E. (4) Marca (Madrid), November 26,
I952, 7.

(6) ibid., April 5, I953, l0.

 

. (7) ibid., November 26, I953, 7.

 

I99

Sordo, Enrique. (I9) Primer Acto (Madrid), No. 57,
October, I964, 56. See also ibid., No. 59, December,
I964, 60-6l.

 

Tellez Moreno, José. (20) Hoja de lunes (Madrid),
March 8, I965, 5.

 

Torrente Ballester, Gonzalo. (4) Arriba (Madrid),
November 25, I952, IO.

. (5) ibid., February 7, I953, I2.

 

. (6) ibid., April 5 I953, 23.

I

 

. (7) Ibid., November 26, I953, I3.

 

. (8) ibid., April l8, I954, l8.

 

. (ID) ibid., December 2 I955, I8.

“I

 

. (I3) ABC (Madrid), November 2|, I958, 59.

 

. (I4) Arriba (Madrid), September 30, I959, 20.

 

. (I5) ibid., November 25, I96I, I8.

 

Trenas, Julio. (I6) Pueblo (Madrid), September I3, I962,
l8.

UmbraI, Francisco. (2I) Arbor, LX, No. 232, April, I965,)
83.

Valencia, Antonio (9) Marca (Madrid), April ID, I955, l0.

. (II) ibid., January l2, I956, 7.

 

. (l2) ibid., April I3, I957, ll.

 

. (I3) ibid., November 2|, I958, ID.

 

. (I4) ibid., September 30, I959, 9.

 

. (I5) ibid., November 24, I96I, I3.

 

. (I7) ibid., October 27, I963, II.

 

(l8) ibid., September 4, I964, II.

 

. (I9) ibid., February 6, I965, IO.

 

. (20) Ibid., March 6, I965, II.

 

200

V.C., F. (l0) Marca (Madrid), December 2, I955, 7.

Vézquez Zamora, Rafael. (6) InSula (Madrid), No. 89,
May l5, l953, l2. “‘“"

. (7) ibid., No. 96, December I5, l953, I2.

 

. (8) ibid., No. I02, April, I954, p. I2;

 

See also ibid., June I, I954.

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