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Poor Man's Bread: A Spanish Version of Hauptmann's The Weavers
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 January 2009
Extract
Poor Man's Bread (El pan del pobre) is the work of two little-known Spanish authors, Félix González Liana and José Francos Rodriguez. First performed on 14 December 1894 at the Teatro de Novedades in Madrid, Poor Man's Bread was, according to its authors, inspired by a reading of Gerhart Hauptmann's The Weavers (1893). Both The Weavers and Poor Man's Bread describe the appalling conditions suffered by industrial workers, the indifference of their bosses to their plight, and their eventual ransacking of the bosses' property. While the German play deals with the lot of the weavers in Hauptmann's native Silesia, its Spanish counterpart is concerned with a metal smelting plant, a fundición, and is set in a small town in the south east of Spain. There are, naturally, many similarities between the two plays, but also a number of important differences which serve to highlight some of the characteristics of the Spanish social drama of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
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References
Notes
1. Yxart, Josep, El arte escenico en España, 2 vols. (Barcelona, 1894), I, p. 247.Google Scholar
2. Echegaray, José (1832–1916)Google Scholar and Cano, Leopoldo (1844–1934)Google Scholar are two Spanish dramatists of the late nineteenth century.
3. El arte escenico, I, p. 91.Google Scholar
4. Ibid., p. 92.
5. The plot of Juan José, the most famous of the Spanish social plays of the 1890s, revolves around the theme of honour. Rosa, the ‘companion’ of Juan José, a member of the industrial poor, is tempted away from him by Juan José's overseer, Paco, who promises her a better life if she goes with him. Juan José, in desperation at having lost his job, turns to crime, and is sentenced to eight years imprisonment. While he is in prison, Rosa goes to live with Paco. Juan José, however, escapes, and avenges his honour by killing Paco, and in addition accidentally kills Rosa.
The Feudal Gentlemen is set in the Spanish countryside. Juana, the daughter of the peasant Juan, has been promised marriage by Carlos, son of the local landowner, don Roque. Roque, however, wants his son to be married to the Marqués's daughter, Maria. The Marqués is against the marriage, knowing that Roque is a social climber and that he wants the match purely for reasons of prestige. However, Roque uses bribery to force the Marqués to consent to the wedding. Jaime, Juana's brother, who is bitter about the treatment of country workers by men such as don Roque, feels that his family honour has been stained by Carlos's rejection of his sister in favour of Maria. He confronts Carlos and kills him by pushing him into a vat of wine, closing the cellar door and throwing away the key.
Daniel is a play with an industrial setting: it is about people who work in the iron ore mine and iron foundry of Don Lucas. Their conditions and pay are miserable and their revolt is led by a young man, Pablo, and a young widow, Cesárea. Matters come to a head when the workers hold a lock-in strike in the foundry over a reduction in their wages. The troops are called in, and in the ensuing scuffle, both Pablo and his soldier brother, Pedro, are shot dead. Their father, Daniel, previously a conscientious and passive worker, swears that he will take his revenge. He begins work as a lift-attendant in the mine, and one day, as don Lucas and various shareholders are returning in the lift from a visit underground, he causes the lift to break, the people travelling in it falling to their deaths.
I shall refer to all three plays by Dicenta in the course of this essay. Albert Bensoussan, ‘Emile Zola sur la scène espagnole: de L'Assommoir à Germinal, de Juan José a Daniel de Joaquín Dicenta’, in Mélanges offerts à Charles Vincent Aubrun, edited by Haîm Vidal Sephila (Paris, 1975), pp. 69–77, considers that Daniel is the Spanish play in which the influence of Zola is most strongly felt (p. 69).
6. El pan del pobre 2nd. ed. (Madrid, 1895), p. 5.Google Scholar Subsequent page references will be given in the text of the article.
7. Hauptmann, Gerhart, Die Weber (Frankfurt am Main/Berlin, 1959), pp. 35–6.Google Scholar
8. Die Weber, pp. 36–7.Google Scholar
9. A note by the authors to the second edition of the play makes it clear that the song was popular with the audience.
10. Pavón, Francisco Garcia, El teatro social en Espana (1895–1962) (Madrid, 1962) p. 57.Google Scholar
11. Die Weber, p. 62.Google Scholar
12. Ibid., p. 78.
13. The following words of Pedro, spoken to his revolutionary brother Pablo, illustrate the comparison: ‘y si nos lo mandan, ¿qué vamos a hacer? ¿Crees que los oficiales y nosotros disparamos por gusto? Pero amigo, la disciplina-es la disciplina’ (‘and if they order us to (i.e. fire on the strikers), what can we do? Do you think that the officers and we soldiers fire for the fun of it? But my friend, discipline – is discipline’) (Daniel (Barcelona, 1913), pp. 10–11).Google Scholar
14. Die Weber, p. 83.Google Scholar
15. Ibid., p. 17.
16. The following sentiments expressed by Cesárea to Pablo in Daniel illustrate the similarity: ‘arrancarles para la muerte, de la miseria, de la esclavitud, y hacer con sus cadáveres una bandera que aliente a sus hijos, es, para ellos, misericordia … deja que muramos nostros. Con nuestra sangre se regarán gérmenes de amor y justicia. Por obra suya brotarán sobre la tierra generaciones en las que los hombres serán hermanos y el trabajo fiesta’ (‘to drag them (i.e. their fellow workers) from misery and slavery towards death and to make with their bodies a flag which will give life to their children, is, for them, a kindness … let us die. With our blood will be watered the seeds of love and justice. Through their efforts will spring onto the earth generations in which men will be brothers, and work a joy’) (Daniel p. 62).Google Scholar Despite the greater naturalism of Daniel in comparison with contemporary Spanish plays, sentimentality and melodrama clearly play an important part in the work, and the religious suggestions contained in the above quotation are obvious.
17. See above.
18. It is not the presentation of the honour theme per se but the uncritical treatment of it that is indicative of the authors' traditionalist attitude. One may contrast this, for example, with the highly imaginative view of honour Valle-Inclán gives us in his plays of the 1920s, which use grotesque parody to satirize the continuing importance of honour in Spanish society.
19. Julia is here contrasting the sort of pride evoked in the quotation with that with which Jenaro believes the workers will act if he gives in to their demands.
20. Contar vejeces (de las memorias de un gacetillero) (Madrid n.d.), pp. 62–3.Google Scholar For details of the actual bombing, see Carr, Raymond, Spain (1808–1975), 2nd. ed. (Oxford, 1982), p. 441.Google Scholar
21. Jiménez, Jesús Rubio, Ideología y teatro en España (1890–1900) (Zaragoza, 1982), p. 232.Google Scholar Press reaction, however, concentrated on what were seen as the play's sentimental and humanitarian qualities, rather than on its ideological ambiguity. For a selection of review articles on the first performance of the play, see Ideología y teatro, pp. 155–8.Google Scholar
22. Ideología y teatro, p. 165.Google Scholar
23. See, for example, the extract in note 16 and the outline of the final part of the play which is given in note 5.
24. I am greatly indebted to Terry Holmes of the Department of German and Russian of the University College of Swansea for his help in translating the extracts from The Weavers and his interpretation of aspects of the play.