Reviews for El postrer duelo de Espana

The average rating for El postrer duelo de Espana based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-04-04 00:00:00 Joshua Jones This volume of plays by Bjørnstjerne Martinus Bjørnson , winner of the 1903 Nobel Prize for literature, containts two gems: Leonarda and the Gauntlet. Both are highly Shavian in spirit in that they are intended to provoke the audience to reflect on a social issue. Leonarda deals the issue of divorce while the Gauntlet is about the sexual double standard. The problem for a modern theatre director is that for these plays to work on the stage there must be divergence of opinion on the question under discussion. As both debates seem to be closed, presenting the arguments in the 21st century would seem like beating a horse. Nonetheless, Bjørnson still deserves to be praised for the contribution that he made to the discussions when the issues were still highly contentious. "Leonarda" presents the story of a divorced woman raising a daughter on her own is forced to confront the issue of society's disapproval of her state when the nephew of the bishop asks for the daughter's hand. Bjørnson argues three points vehemently: (1) divorce is sometimes a good thing; (2) shunning divorced people and their children is wrong; and (3) judging people based on incomplete or erroneous information is always wrong. Since we all now agree with these propositions or at least pay lip-service to the drama, three dramatic impact of the play is seriously mined. With the audience in agreement, the only opposition to the author's point of view comes from the Bishop and his ghastly family which is not enough to generate the tension necessary in the theatre. Nonetheless the plays is still worth reading as Bjørnson brilliantly exposes all the logic and methods of a society determined to punish a divorced woman. Young people growing up in the 21st century need to read a few works like this in order to understand what the world was once like. Another major problem with "Leonarda" is that the heroine ultimately takes her husband back. It turns out that she only divorced him because she felt that she needed to in order to make him stop drinking. Once the husband has proven that he has won his battle with Demon Rum, Leonarda takes him back like Katherine Hepburn remarries the reformed alcoholic Cary Grant in the Philadelphia Story. Todays' audience which requires that divorce be presented as an act of absolution liberation from which no one must turn back, could simply not accept this subplot of "Leonarda." However, Bjørnson's worst gaffe in "Leonarda" is that he has the daughter's fiancée fall in love with the mother. Bjørnson solves the problem by having the mother elope with the Father to America. Out of the way, the mother assumes that her daughter and the young man will quickly rekindle their romance. This is of course a very ghastly plot twist that seriously comprises an already flawed play. While, "Leonarda" provides a great historical snapshot of our society's debate on divorce, it simply no longer belongs on stage. "The Gauntlet" addresses another debate that is now closed in our society that of the sexual double standard whereby single men could be sexually active while any women who acted in the same fashion would be considered highly immoral. Today we feel that both men and women have the same right to be sexually active prior to marriage. Bjørnson's problem is that he argues that neither men nor women should engage in sexual relations prior to marriage. We don't accept this idea today nor did anyone it appears in nineteenth century Norway. The dramatic action begins when Svava the heroine upon learning that her fiancé had had an affair with one his family's domestic servants breaks of her engagement. A large group rises in wrath against her. There is near unanimous agreement that her call for sexual abstinence for unmarried mean is a threat to the moral, social and political order of Norway. He father calls her foolish. The Family doctor informs her that she is fighting society's rules. Svava's prospective father-in-law who is a knight and influential in Oslo threatens to ruin the career her mother. Her fiancé tells her that she is being unfair and says that he will forgive her if she simply shuts up. Only Svava's mother takes her side informing her that she regrets not having taking a firm live with Svava's father over his philandering. Like Shaw, Bjørnson is able to build a play purely with argument on an issue. In its day it must have sparked a great deal of discussion in the cafés near the theatre after the performances. Sadly, I do not think that it could be successfully staged for today's public.

Review # 2 was written on 2009-05-18 00:00:00 Paul Cody I've been curious about Ubu Roi for years. Probably very influential in the development of Surrealism, DADA, Theater of the Absurd, and more. Certainly more influential than any other 19th-century French puppet play. While it might still be fun to see Ubu Roi performed "live" by puppets, it is not very funny on the page, unless you really love puns about poo-poo. However, the third play, Ubu Enchained actually is funny even on the page, and could be hilarious live. In this play we see more mature writing. Though there are plenty of pee-pee jokes, the inversions of logic is what makes this funny. Ubu no longer wants to be king and now tries to become a slave, though his idea of serving his masters is pretty strange. Another reviewer took the trouble to type in one of the funny bits. Here is a shortened version THREE FREE MEN: .... Let's not forget, it's our duty to be free. Hey! Not so fast, or we might arrive on time. Freedom means never arriving on time--never, never!--for our freedom drills. Let's disobey together . . . No! not together; one, two, three! the first will disobey on the count of one, the second on two, the third on three. That makes all the difference. Let's each march out of step with the other two, however exhausting it may be to keep it up. Let's disobey individually... The translations here by Connolly and Taylor are good. But the formatting of the Kindle edition is HORRIBLE. It appears that no human bothered to read it to look for errors from the optical character recognition. As an example "PA UBU" becomes at various times "P A UBU", "P AUBU", "PA U B U", etc. The funniest mistake was when they said that the set designs for Ubu Enchained were created by "Mad Ernst"! Ha! Did the play drive poor Herr Ernst mad? Four stars here is purely for Ubu Enchained. The others are mainly of historical interest.