Chapter 5

Romeo and Juliet in Spain

Though the Italian sources of Romeo and Juliet had already been adapted by Golden Age dramatists in the seventeenth century, it wasn’t until the nineteenth century that Shakespeare’s version of the story began to appear on the Spanish stage. These plays, which drew heavily on the neoclassical reappraisal of Shakespeare in France and other non-Anglophone countries, have been neglected and underrated, as well as being subject to various kinds of error and confusion. Focusing on Dionisio Solís’s Julia y Romeo (1803), Manuel García Suelto’s Romeo y Julieta (1817) and the libretto for an undated operatic version, this chapter studies their relation to their most immediate sources – German in the first case, French in the second and third –, as well as the adaptations and rewritings effected to bring them into line with contemporary Spanish tastes and expectations. Rather than dismiss them as inferior or unrecognisable versions of Shakespeare, the chapter acknowledges their status as the only form of “Shakespeare” performable at the time, together with their contribution, both direct and indirect, to making Shakespeare known and to the reception and dissemination of Romeo and Juliet as one of the most widely translated plays in Spain.