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In from the Cold: Celebrating Shakespeare in Francoist Spain

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Shakespeare in Cold War Europe

Part of the book series: Global Shakespeares ((GSH))

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Abstract

This chapter considers the reception of Shakespeare in 1960s Spain, especially in light of the 1964 quatercentenary celebrations. Given the Franco regime’s obsession with promoting an image of freedom and respectability before the international community and with being accepted by international bodies like the EEC and NATO, it examines the accommodation in censorship and on the stage of previously neglected and/or outlawed cultural material. In the case of Shakespearian drama, this accommodating process or so-called apertura included a surprising new dispensation not just towards English-language productions like the Shakespeare Festival company’s version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream but towards Spanish adaptations by exiles such as poet and playwright León Felipe’s rewriting of Twelfth Night.

The research for this chapter was funded by the Dirección General de Investigación, Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad as part of project FFI2011–24160, ‘La presencia de Shakespeare en España en el marco de su recepción europea’ [‘Shakespeare’s Presence in Spain within the Framework of His Reception in Europe’].

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Notes

  1. 1.

    I have not been able to obtain permission for this photo, which can be seen on http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2010/01/16/espana/1263598607.html, amongst other sites. For a discussion of the broader implications of the event, see Vilarós (2004).

  2. 2.

    Barthes’s categorization of photographic meaning is sketched in Barthes (1996). On developing relations between Spain and the USA in the Cold War period see, amongst others, Liedtke (1999), Marks (2002), and Rosendorf (2014).

  3. 3.

    See esp. Casper and Taylor (1996, pp. 209–13), Tusell (2007, pp. 187–269), and Alonso and Alonso (2011, pp. 1–15).

  4. 4.

    On the role of Opus Dei and other ultra-Catholic movements in late-dictatorial Spain, see esp. Payne (1984, pp. 192–217) and Sabín Rodríguez (1997, pp. 275–352).

  5. 5.

    Birkelbach (2015, esp. article 3.25). See Whitehead (1986, pp. 20–21) on how Francoist Spain was specifically targeted by the report.

  6. 6.

    ‘la fuente de cada perversión’, ‘reserva spiritual de Occidente’. On the strategy and impact of tourism in 1960s Spain, see Lawrence (2008) and Crumbaugh (2009, pp. 41–65). All the translations from Spanish are my own.

  7. 7.

    An illustrative example of the relationship between a more permissive censorship and contemporary politics is the conspicuously benign attitude of the censors towards Cold War-inspired literature such as the spy fiction of Western authors like John Le Carré or Ian Fleming. As Juan F. Elices has shown in a recent essay (2013), especially in the case of Fleming’s James Bond series, the Regime’s tolerance of what was already established as a massively popular subgenre extended to a tacit approval of the sexual politics which accompanied it. Thus, while the many scenes containing explicit allusions to the protagonist’s sexual practice were cut, episodes involving the harassment or even humiliation of Bond’s female partners tended to be left intact, an ambivalence which can also be seen at work with regard to the texts’ racism.

  8. 8.

    On Fraga’s admiration for what he calls the ‘English model’ of government and his presence as ambassador in London, see Fraga (1980, pp. 299–375).

  9. 9.

    On the history of censorship during the Franco Regime, see Abellán (1980). For Fraga’s revision and apparent softening of the law post-1966, see Cisquella et al. (1977). For the surveillance and control of theatrical performance, see Muñoz Cáliz (2005).

  10. 10.

    ‘La libertad de expresión y el derecho a la difusión de informaciones…no tendrán más limitaciones que las impuestas por las leyes.’

  11. 11.

    ‘la presentación irrespetuosa de creencias y prácticas religiosas’, ‘imágenes y escenas que puedan provocar bajas pasiones en el espectador normal’, ‘las alusiones hechas de tal manera que resulten más sugerentes que la presentación del hecho mismo’, ‘expresiones coloquiales’, ‘las escenas o planos de carácter íntimo que atenten contra las más elementales normas del buen gusto’.

  12. 12.

    ‘distancia histórica’, ‘disposición especial’, ‘características particulares del lenguaje y de las situaciones’.

  13. 13.

    For a discussion of the politically motivated differences between the British and Spanish commemorations of 1916, see Calvo (2002). For the historic ‘competition’ between Shakespeare and Cervantes for critical attention in Spain, see Pujante (2001).

  14. 14.

    ‘The fourth centenary of Shakespeare has gone by practically unnoticed’, complained one critic at the end of 1964. This did not mean that no tributes were paid, but that ‘the status of the world’s premier dramatist—still unsurpassed—and his universality required a universal apotheosis’ [‘El IV Centenario de Shakespeare ha pasado casi inadvertido […] Pero la categoría del primer dramaturgo del mundo—todavía no superado—su dimensión universal requerían una universal apoteosis] (F. Álvaro qtd. in Muñoz Carabantes 2002, p. 250).

  15. 15.

    Thus, according to figures given by Muñoz Carabantes (2002), there were four productions of Shakespeare in 1955–1956, seven in 1956–1957, four in 1957–1958, four more in 1958–1959, three in 1959–1960, none at all in 1960–1961, two in 1961–1962, two in 1962–1963, seven in 1963–1964, eight in 1964–1965, two in 1965–1966, three in 1966–1967, three in 1967–1968, another three in 1968–1969 and only two in 1969–1970.

  16. 16.

    In the 1963–1964 season, the following plays were performed: Hamlet (by the Alejandro Ulloa company); A Midsummer Night’s Dream (by the Teatro Español Company, under the direction of Cayetano Luca de Tena, a revival of his 1945 production); the same play in English (by the British Shakespeare Festival Company, directed by Wendy Toye); The Merchant of Venice (also in English, by the same company, this time directed by David Williams); Othello (again in English, in a performance organized by the British Institute in Barcelona); Much Ado about Nothing (from an adaptation by Enrique Ortenbach and directed by Ramiro Bascompte), together with a revival of Julius Caesar by José María Pemán and José Tamayo, first performed in 1955 and restaged by the Lope de Vega Company. Barcelona and to a lesser extent Madrid (with only three productions) were the only two cities to stage these productions. The situation in the following season was very similar: a show prepared by the Barcelona group FESTA comprising scenes from different plays; the revival of Ulloa’s Hamlet; The Merchant of Venice (in a Catalan version by Josep María Sagarra and staged by the EADAG); the Esteban Polls Macbeth; the León Felipe adaptation of Twelfth Night; an adaptation of Henry VIII by Piedad Salas and presented under the title Catalina de Aragón (Katharine of Aragon); the Polls Julius Caesar; The Taming of the Shrew (performed by the pupils of the Madrid School of Drama, the RESAD) and a new version of Othello by the extremely active Alejandro Ulloa. With the exception of Catalina de Aragón and The Taming of the Shrew, all of these productions were premiered in Barcelona, which thus became the veritable capital of the quatercentenary events in Spain.

  17. 17.

    See, in this light, the discussion of Shakespearean comedy in Portillo and Gómez-Lara (1994), where it is argued that comedy, that most under-performed of genres in the Spanish reception of the Bard, not only offered an alternative to decades of an (at times) imposed cultural solemnity but appealed directly to the dissenting, ‘what-you-will’ mindset of a generation longing for the completion of the transition to full democracy.

  18. 18.

    See the report in Teatro.es (2015, n.p.).

  19. 19.

    See, for instance, Monleón (2015) who applauds the English actors’ ‘sense of irony, a cultural density which allows them to be light, without being frivolous […] or to address the audience directly, without the performance falling apart as a result’ (‘sentido de la ironía, su espesor cultural, que les permite ser ligeros sin ser frívolos. O dirigirse descaradamente al public, sin que, por ello, la representación se rompa’), together with the use of the auditorium as an entrance, projecting the performance onto the audience ‘in the manner of the music-hall’ (‘al modo del music-hall’), respecting the relations between the characters on-stage while remaining ‘wondrously close’ (‘prodigiosamente cerca’) to the spectator. For a slightly fuller account of these productions than can be offered here, see Gregor (2010, pp. 97–99).

  20. 20.

    ‘se acercaba más a la fantasía que a la realidad’.

  21. 21.

    On León Felipe’s problematic relationship with the Regime, see Muñoz Cáliz (2010, pp. 207–214). Primer acto, which published the text of the play, tactfully laments the neglect Felipe had suffered in Spain, echoing the comments of some readers who believed him dead or even non-existent (1961).

  22. 22.

    ‘Ha interpolado nuevos personajes y conceptos, / ha creado otras escenas y conflictos, ha suprimido el episodio burlesco / de Malvolio’, ‘otra medida y otro aliento’.

  23. 23.

    ‘el espectador es capaz de indentificar desde el principio quién es el personaje verdadero.’ I am grateful to Elena Bandín for this and other references to the censorship files.

  24. 24.

    Though for reasons that are not clear, they do seem to have completely overlooked the Captain [Carranzano]’s allusion to the coup which ended the twins’ brief reign in Messaline: ‘And then appears the villain, the general who is always on the prowl, / with his treacherous hand on the hilt of his sword’ (‘Entonces aparece el villano, el general que acecha siempre, / con la mano traidora en la empuñadura de la espada’; Felipe 1974, p. 152).

  25. 25.

    ‘el fantasma de Shakespeare—al igual que el de Banquo, en “Macbeth”—nos anduviera rondando la escena con talante recriminatorio.’

  26. 26.

    ‘El libro fue un tirano […] y otro tirano el proscenio. / Entre los dos […] encarcelaron a los sueños.’ In the preface to his ‘paraphrase’ of Macbeth Felipe gently hints at the political obstacles to the recognition of the classics in Spain: ‘Because at this climactic moment in Western history, where national hierarchies are being organized in terms of essential values, setting poetic Spain next to poetic England has a greater urgency than a comparative study of, say, Churchill and Franco.’ (‘Porque en este momento climatérico de la historia de Occidente, en que la jerarquía de los pueblos se va a organizer sobre virtudes esenciales, es más urgent colocar junto a la Inglaterra poética la España poética, que hacer un studio comparative entre Churchill y Franco, por ejemplo’; Felipe 1983, p. 13).

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  1. Murcia, Spain

    Keith Gregor

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  1. Keith Gregor
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  1. Department of English and Related Litera, University of York, York, United Kingdom

    Erica Sheen

  2. University of Würzburg, Würzburg, Bayern, Germany

    Isabel Karremann

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Gregor, K. (2016). In from the Cold: Celebrating Shakespeare in Francoist Spain. In: Sheen, E., Karremann, I. (eds) Shakespeare in Cold War Europe. Global Shakespeares. Palgrave Pivot, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-51974-0_7

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