Robert G. Trimble is Professor Emeritus of Spanish and Portuguese at Hanover College in Indiana. He earned the Ph.D. in Spanish Language and Literature at Indiana University.
2009 0-7734-3859-9 An example of romanticist drama, this play is based on an actual rebellion against the government of Venice and the Doge, Pietro Gradenigo, on June 15, 1310. The author, MartĂnez de la Rosa, based this play on the event, setting it around a young couple passionately in love.
2012 0-7734-2545-4 This is a translation and compilation of four books into one volume by the notable Spanish author Benito Perez Galdos. Usually the books are broken up into four separate stories, but this volume brings together all of the novels to provide their true meaning by juxtaposing them. Galdos is widely considered the most important Spanish language author since Cervantes.
2006 0-7734-6172-8 Following the Wars of the Spanish Succession in the early years of the eighteenth century, France sent a prince to become King Felipe V of Spain. With him came French Neo-Classicism into the Spanish court, an effect lasting into the nineteenth century. During this period the dramatists in Spain most often wrote translations of French plays, or their own, according to the strict Neo-Classical rules of time, place and action.
Leandro Fernández de MoratĂn was schooled by his father and the father’s friends in the Neo-Classic traditions, but he felt the differences between the French sense of good taste and the Spanish spirit that appreciates, even thrives on, the pleasures and sorrows of our human drama.
In the play El sĂ de las niñas, MoratĂn adheres to the Neo-Classical rules. The action of the play takes place in one location during the course of one night. The main characters are all of the same social class in spite of significant economic differences.
The play is a delightful farce, although in the early nineteenth century it was seen and even banned as sacrilegious by Spain’s Catholic Church. It is a love story about an older man, never married, who hopes to wed a young girl who will love and care for him in his dotage. His wealth will sustain not only the girl, but her impoverished mother who favors the marriage for her own benefits. Without the mother’s knowledge the girl has met and fallen in love with a handsome young army officer who gave her a false name. In fact, he is the nephew and presumed heir of the older man.
For a work of the early nineteenth century, El sà de las niñas was much more lively and popular than others, and, even today and in translation it is a very vibrant play.
2013 0-7734-4504-8 The best translation of Manuel Bretón de los Herreros’ favorite play among his many plays brings new attention to the playwright Bretón who was once Spain’s most prolific and successful comic dramatist but for some time has been absent from the studied lists of noted playwrights of his time.
2008 0-7734-4908-6 The first English translation published of Carlos Segundo, el Hechizado.
The play Charles the Second, the Bewitched was lauded as one of the great Romantic dramas, while at the same time, viewed as scandalous for dealing with the incompetence of the royalty and the policies of the Catholic Church.
2010 0-7734-1312-X This work is a translation of a Spanish drama of the nineteenth century. It was first performed in Madrid in 1872. The play is based on the true life conflict between Spanish king, Phillip II, and his son Don Carlos during the political and religious turmoil of the sixteenth-century. It is an excellent example of Spanish drama in the neo-romantic tradition.
2007 0-7734-5432-2 This book is an English translation of Don Juan Valera’s novel Morsamor. In 1521, as Spanish and Portuguese mariners are navigating the seas and discovering new worlds, Miguel de Zuheros, an aging friar, leads a contemplative life, cloistered in Seville. From outside the monastery walls, news arrives of the fame, glory and achievements of his compatriots, heightening the friar’s sense of his own insignificance and obscurity, while arousing a desire to share in the excitement of the Age of Exploration. Nearing death as he is, Friar Miguel feels he must abandon such hopes for adventure until he encounters a new individual in the monastery, Father Ambrosio, a priest schooled in the art of alchemy and the magic of the faith. Anointing the despondent friar, Father Ambrosio gives him a potion whereby he becomes the dashing young adventurer Morsamor (“death-love”) who seeks to circumnavigate the globe and explore the deep recesses of the heart. Shipwrecked after the many entertaining exploits, Morsamor awakes, back in the monastery, having reverted to his alter-ego, the dying Friar Miguel, where he ponders the reality and meaning of his adventures while struggling for the purity of his soul.