The Duchess of San Quintín

Benito Pérez Galdós (1843-1920), a native of the Canary Islands, is generally considered the greatest Spanish novelist since Cervantes. Some thirty-one novels-highlighted by the masterful Fortunata and Jacinta (Fortunata y Jacinta)-attest to the fact that his oeuvre merits comparison with the works of contemporaries like Balzac, Dickens, Thackeray, and Eça de Queirós. And in five series of historical-fictional National Episodes (forty-six in all) he chronicled the span of the nineteenth century in Spain, from 1805 to the 1890s. But Don Benito, as he was known to many, had, from an early age, an enduring interest in the theater-an interest that he would rekindle in 1892 while at the height of his output of key works grouped under the rubric of "Contemporary Spanish Novels," an interest, furthermore, that would lead him to write twenty-four plays. The first three opened to mixed reviews. Reality (Realidad, 1892) and The Madwoman of the House (La loca de la casa, 1893) were based on novels of the same titles, and Gerona (1893) was based on the National Episode publication of 1874. Critics and theater-going public alike called into question the widely acclaimed novelist's ability to become a dramatist of note, not a dramatist manqué who would play on his fame as a writer of fiction. Hence the importance of The Duchess of San Quintín (1894), Galdós's first original play, which-with its revolutionary theme-triumphed to such a degree and to such overwhelming popular approval that it ran for fifty consecutive performances in Spain's capital. *** Robert M. Fedorchek is a professor emeritus of modern languages and literatures at Fairfield University. He has published twenty-one books of translations of Spanish literature. This is his fourth translation for Juan de la Cuesta Hispanic Monographs.