Comedia - Early Modern / Golden Age Spanish Theatre

Literary/ Cultural Context Essay

Duncan Wheeler (University of Leeds)

Ed. by Stuart Green, University of Leeds
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.6.2.01: Spanish Literature and Culture from the Beginning to the Golden Age.
Vol. editors: Andrew M. Beresford (University of Durham), Stuart Green (University of Leeds), Juan Pablo Rodriguez (Yale University), Duncan Wheeler (University of Leeds)

Domains

Literature Topic
Movement, Theory, Style (theatre)

Dates

Date of occurrence 1560-1680

Places

Spain (Location)

Genres and Modes

Drama

Resources

Recommended Reading

As Melveena McKendrick notes, “[u]nder the auspices of Lope de Vega, Spain’s commercial theatre became probably the most successful theatre ever in terms of the number of plays written and the number of people, proportionate to population of course, who flocked to see them” (1989: 72). This raises a number of complex questions. How and why did this cultural phenomenon emerge? Were the twin demands of art and commerce complementary and/or contradictory? If Early Modern Spanish dramatists were so successful at the time, why is it that they no longer figure as prominently in the collective consciousness as their French and English counterparts? Was the quantity of the drama matched in terms of quality? For the purposes of this …

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2698 words

Citation: Wheeler, Duncan . "Comedia - Early Modern / Golden Age Spanish Theatre". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 23 August 2011 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=17652, accessed 22 November 2024.]

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