SOURCE: Nicholas, Robert L. “The History Plays: Buero Vallejo's Experiment in Dramatic Expression.” Revista de Estudios Hispánicos II, no. 1 (April 1969): 281-93.

In the following essay, Nicholas considers the intrinsic artistic merit of Un soñador para un pueblo and Las Meninas, asserting that Buero Vallejo was “attempting to approximate, in the plays' structures, the spirit of the historical moment depicted in each play.”

Un soñador para un pueblo (1958) and Las Meninas (1960) constitute something of a digression in the career of Antonio Buero Vallejo. They are preceded by ten years of largely realistic playwriting and followed by what appears to be a renewal of that realistic current.¹ The central characters in these plays are not middle class figures, but intellectuals and artists cast in a heroic mold. Buero is more interested in having them make statements of artistic and political truths than in engaging them in psychological...