SOURCE: “Francisco Martínez de la Rosa: Literary Atrophy or Creative Sagacity?” in Hispanofila, Vol. 27, No. 1, September, 1983, pp. 11-19.

In the following essay, Geraldi enumerates parallels between Martínez de la Rosa's dramas Aben-Humeya and La conjuración de Venecia, while maintaining that both plays were artistically innovative and revolutionary.

In reading Aben Humeya (1830) and La conjuración de Venecia (1834) by the dramatist Francisco Martínez de la Rosa, the reader becomes aware of various similarities in the two plays and may be misled to the erroneous conclusion that the author was lacking in inventive and creative powers.

It is the purpose of this article to illustrate some of these striking parallels in plot, structure, idea, characterization, situation, incident and dialogue in these dramas and offer possible reasons for these similarities and thus justify the conclusion that Martínez de la Rosa was indeed clever in developing further...