Hacia el pensamiento de Juan Ruiz de Alarcón

Abstract

The comedy of characters was born in the hands of Ruiz de Alarcón as he achieved that from his first comedies, those of enredo, the main characters learnt to govern their own actions without any classification. That is the reason why the critics, without any further analysis, have described his theatre as 'moral'. Nevertheless, we are talking about a dramatist who stages mirages, unmasks tyrants disguised as level-headed monarchs, and frustrates the development of those court favourites who were egoists and ill by their passions. At the same time, the omission of providence becomes another kind of protest. All the court on the stage to ridicule with irony and punish their bad habits and delusions. When he finally discovered the politics of the conde-duque de Olivares, he decided to give up theatre. Therefore, we discover another Juan Ruiz de Alarcón never suspected: the dramatist who believed in the program of reformation that the conde-duque de Olivares, court favourite of King Philip IV, wanted to impose to a «patria doliente», name given by the dramatist to the Spain of the first half of the 17th century.