Victor Hugo and Duque de Rivas: the arrival of romanticism on the stages of France and Spain

Abstract

Around the year 1810 Nikolaus Böhl von Faber was the first to spread in
Spain the ideas brought about by the Romantic Movement. His articles gave
rise to decades of disputes very much the same as it happened in France,
where Victor Hugo’s Preface to Cromwell (1827) and the première of Hernani
(1830) caused serious disputes about esthetic matters, and marked the final
victory of Romanticism. In Spain such quarrels were stirred up by Duque de
Rivas’ play Don Alvaro o la fuerza del sino (1835). The paper begins with a
brief account of the controversy over different esthetic thoughts associated
with Don Alvaro, and proceeds to the analysis of the play with regard to
Hugo’s ideas.