SOURCE: “Plays of Impasse: The Recent Tragedies of Antonio Buero Vallejo,” in Anales de la Literatura Española Contemporanea, Vol. 18, No. 3, 1993, pp. 539–52.

In the following essay, Halsey discusses four of Buero Vallejo's plays from the late 1970s and 1980s, asserting their prominence as tragedies of personal and social impasse.

Paramount in Buero's tragic theater is the idea of individual responsibility. In his drama the ethical and the social are inseparable. He explains the apparent emphasis on the former: “Hay, pues, en mi teatro—creo—una problemática ética más ostensible que la social, pero porque la problemática social debe ser, en mi opinión, casi siempre implícita, aunque no menos básica e importante. Es cuestión de estructura artística” (Bejel 75–76). The personal responsibility of the individual is foregrounded. Buero deals with social problems “intentando penetrar en cuestiones más oscuras, relacionadas con la...