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Theatre

La política del mundo

Not translated into English

Víctor de la Guardia y Ayala · 1809

Synopsis

A tragedy in verse that stages the events that brought down the Roman Republic and delivered Rome to the domination of Caesar. Beneath this ancient mask, the author targets Napoleon, the modern Caesar, and his invasion of the Spain of Ferdinand VII: the play condemns tyranny in a series of classical forms, octosyllabic romances, quintillas, decimas, royal octaves and silvas.

Context

The play was first known in Penonomé in 1809. It then fell into oblivion until the Costa Rican historian Ricardo Fernández Guardia found it again in 1902; it was in the country where its author had ended his life that it was able to appear. Rodrigo Miró saw in it a mere device: the fall of the Roman Republic used to speak of Napoleon. A second play by the same man, La reconquista de Granada, dated 1817, is lost.

Who it is for

In Spanish, with no published translation, neoclassical in manner; a play that Panamanian critics judge to be made more for reading than for the stage.

Prizes and reception

Regarded as the first play of Panamanian theatre, and as the work of the only author of the isthmus in the second neoclassical generation.

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