Agustín Moreto y Cabaña: A Transitional Playwright and His Heroines

This paper will look at three plays by Agustín Moreto y Cabaña, to wit, El desdén con el desdén, De fuera vendrá quien de casa nos echará, and Lo que puede la aprehensión. It will contrast these plays with their adaptations in France: Molière's La Princesse d'Élide, Thomas Corneille's Le Baron d'Albikrac and Le Charme de la voix, to show that, since Moreto adhered to Neoclassical tenets to a greater extent than other Spanish playwrights of the Siglos de Oro, his theater was quite popular in the Grand Siècle of contemporary France. Nevertheless, there are Baroque influences in Moreto's theater, which accounts for the changes that his plays experienced when adapted to the French stage. Moreto, therefore, is a transitional playwright, who showed influences of both Neoclassical and Baroque precepts. This is illustrated in Moreto's portrayal of his heroines—i.e., Diana, Francisca, the Duchess and Fenisa,—as well, who at times manifest influences of Neoclassicism, at others those of Baroque. Finally, the paper will look at evidence of feminism in the three plays discussed, and conclude that, even though Moreto was sympathetic to some feminist vindications, he was not a feminist by modern standards. He lived, after all, at a time and in a country different from our own, and so has to be seen and judged within the context of his own period.