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Romeo and Juliet in European Culture
Edited by Juan F. Cerdá, Dirk Delabastita and Keith Gregor
[Shakespeare in European Culture 1] 2017
► pp. 197–226

Chapter 10
“Unveiling” Romeo and Juliet in Spain

Translation, performance and censorship

| University of León
This paper surveys the reception of Romeo and Juliet in Franco’s Spain by showing the evolution of the tragedy on the Spanish stages. Thanks to the censorship material kept at the Archivo General de la Administración, I have carried out an analysis of different productions that reveals that Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is not a stable entity but a web of translations, adaptations and appropriations reflecting the political, social and cultural forces at work at the time. Besides, this work brings to light how the performance of the play evolved from a poetic and chaste love story during the first years of the dictatorship to a more sexual and tasteless comedy framed in the context of the destape (unveiling) period, thus entering the realm of lowbrow culture and becoming a Shakespop product.
Keywords: Romeo and Juliet , Franco’s Spain, censorship, performance, adaptation, translation, appropriation
Article outline
  • A poetic and chaste love story in the eyes of Francoism
  • “What’s in a name?” Just a name, only a name …
  • The tragedy becomes a comedy
  • And then came the destape
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 14 December 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/sec.1.11ban
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Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Rayner, Francesca
2021. The story of what might have been: Interrogating Romeo and Juliet under the Portuguese dictatorship. Sederi :31 ► pp. 73 ff. DOI logo

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