The novel Doña Perfecta, one of the best Galdós ever wrote, both as an artistic story and as a symbol of the chronic particularism of Spain, has been somewhat weakened in dramatization. The third act is almost unnecessary, the dénoûment hurried. One misses especially the first two chapters of the novel, which furnish such a colorful background for the story. Yet, as a whole, the play gives a more favorable impression of Galdós' purely theatrical talent than almost any other of his dramas. The second act, with its distant bugle calls at the end, is one of the best he ever wrote, and the first is not far behind. It is to be noted that the motivation, especially in the part of Perfecta, is made much clearer here than in the novel; the play serves as a commentary and exegesis to the earlier tale. The gain in clarity is offset, however, by the loss of the mysterious grandeur which clothes Perfecta in the novel. There, her reticences speak for her.
8. La fiera, drama en tres actos. Madrid, Teatro de la Comedia, Dec. 23, 1896. Coldly received.
La fiera is allied in subject to the Episodios nacionales, although it is not taken from any of them. The year is 1822, the scene, the city of Urgell, in the Pyrenees, attacked at that moment by the liberals under Espoz y Mina, and defended by the absolutists. A young liberal spy is loved by an absolutist baroness, and after numberless intrigues during which the hero's life is in danger from friends and enemies, he kills first the leader of the liberals, then the commander of the fortress, "the two heads of the beast," and the lovers flee toward regions of peace. As an appeal for tolerance, La fiera is unexceptionable, and Galdós, the radical, has painted the excesses of both sides with perfect impartiality. But as a drama, it is an example of wildly improbable romanticism, and might have been written in the thirties, except that in that case the comedy element would not be so insipid as it is, but would have tasted of the pungent realism which was the virtue of the best romantics. The characters are unconvincing, the love-story a poor parallel to Romeo and Juliet.
9. Electra, drama en cinco actos. Madrid, Teatro Español, Jan. 30, 1901. A wild success. A French adaptation made a hit in Paris in 1905.
This "strictly contemporary" drama depicts a contest for the hand and soul of Electra, an eighteen-year-old girl whose mother was a woman of dubious life. She loves the young scientist Máximo, but Pantoja, the religious adviser of the family with whom she stays, believing himself her father, desires her to enter a convent. Since he cannot otherwise dissuade her from marriage, he tells her falsely that she is Máximo's half sister. She cannot be convinced that this is a lie until the spirit of her mother reassures her.
Concerning Electra and the battle which it excited between radicals and clericals, one can consult contemporary periodicals, and Olmet y Carraffa, cap. XIV. Its estreno happened to coincide with a popular protest against the forced retirement to a convent of a Señorita de Ubao, and the Spanish public saw in the protagonist a symbol of Spain, torn between reaction and progress. Consequently, no play of Galdós has been so unduly praised or so bitterly attacked. Two facts appear to stand out from the confusion: (1) Galdós did not deliberately trade upon popular passions, since this play was written before the exciting juncture of events arose; (2) The enormous vogue of Electra, its wide sale and performance in many European countries, were not justified by its intrinsic value.
Electra appears now as a drama of secondary importance, with some cheap effectism, excellent third and fourth acts, and a weakly romantic ending. The ghost of Eleuteria is less in place than the corresponding spirits of Realidad and Casandra, both because it is unnecessary for the solution of the plot, and because it is an anachronism in a play devoted to the eulogy of the modern and the practical. On the other side, it is clear to an impartial reader that Galdós did not intend an attack on the clergy, much less an attack on religion. Máximo is careful to affirm his belief in God. And Pantoja is not the scheming hypocrite that some have seen in him; he is a man of firm convictions and courage, sincere in his religious mysticism. Galdós was interested in studying such a character and in showing that his religion is not of the best type.
A punning title. Beside the Greek allusion, Máximo's laboratory is a "taller de electrotecnia."
10. Alma y vida, drama en cuatro actos. Madrid, Teatro Español, April 9, 1902. (Published with an important preface.) Succès d'estime.
This play is Galdós' vital contribution to the sentiment aroused in Spain by the Spanish-American war. The heroine, Laura, an invalid duchess of the late eighteenth century, is ruled by a tyrannical administrator, until freed by the love of a vigorous young hidalgo. But the effort of will involved exhausts the delicate girl, and she dies just as the triumph of her partisans is announced. She was the divine beauty of the soul; without her there is left only a tyranny of one sort or another, and evil, injustice, corruption, are perpetuated.