Out of the Wings

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El gran galeoto (1881), José Echegaray y Eizaguirre

Titles
English title: The Great Galeoto
Date written: 1881
First publication date: 1881
First production date: 1881
Keywords: family > marriage, morality > honour, violence > social, family > duty, family > patriarchy, love, love > relationships, love > friendship
Genre and type: melodrama
Pitch

Madrid is awash with gossip. A handsome young man has moved in with his older benefactor – who just happens to have a very beautiful young wife. Surely, the gossips agree, such an arrangement is bound to lead to trouble? In El gran galeoto (The Great Galeoto) relationships are ruined and lives destroyed, as a society with an insatiable appetite for scandal decides that where there’s smoke, there’s fire.

Synopsis

Julian (aged 40) and Teodora (aged 20) are a happily-married couple. They live in Madrid, sharing their home and their wealth with the 27-year-old writer, Ernesto. Julian owes his fortu... (Read more...)

Sources

The Divine Comedy (Inferno) by Dante

Ernesto is obsessed with the fifth canto of Dante’s Inferno, which includes the tale of Francesca, whose soul wallows in the second circle of Hell ... (Read more...)

Critical response

El gran galeoto (The Great Galeoto) was both a critical and a public success, and is probably Echegaray’s most popular play.

El gran galeoto contains a number of themes that run through... (Read more...)

Further information

Excerpts from the 1917 translation of the play are available by clicking on the Monologue Archive website [accessed January 2011]. The excerpts are taken from Ernesto’s speeches in sce... (Read more...)

Editions
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Entry written by Gwynneth Dowling. Last updated on 25 February 2011.

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