Here are two of the three plays that Spanish playwright republished in his 1930 collection Martes de Carnaval. They are in esperpento, a genre he had had recently defined that combines puppetry
with farce and bitter satire. The target of his satire was the culture of the Spanish military, which for him encapsulated the worst and most retrogressive values of Spanish society. He
particularly disliked the army both for its role in Spanish political life, and because of the disjunction between its protestations of military honor and its defeat in the Spanish-American War
of 1898. Lonsdale presents the first English translation of Las gala del difunto and La hija del capitán on pages facing the Spanish originals. Distributed in North America by Casemate
Academic, formerly the David Brown Book Company. Annotation ©2014 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)
