On 18 June 1933, the ruins of the Roman Theatre in Mérida, in Western Spain, awaited their first professional performance in sixteen centuries: Seneca's Medea, translated by the philosopher and playwright Miguel de Unamuno, performed by the Xirgu-Borràs theatre company and directed by Cipriano Rivas Cherif. The performance gathered local people from the region of Extremadura, national authorities, international dignitaries and intellectuals. It became a success of profound repercussions and impact:

The day of Seneca's Medea

Over three thousand people attended the performance of Seneca's Medea. The Roman Theatre originally had enough capacity to sit five thousand spectators, but, in order to guarantee comfort and avoid having an unmanageable crowd, it was decided to reduce the seats to three thousand by not selling tickets for the summa cavea. Even so, Rivas Cherif and the Mayor of Mérida had decided to add extra seats in the first three rows and so extend the theatre's capacity, given that tickets had been sold-out for days. In the theatre, locals, eager to hear Medea, according to the Prime Minister, Manuel Azaña, were joined by audience members from Madrid, Barcelona and other provinces, including some from neighbouring Portugal and others from even further afield, like Toulouse. A group of ateneístas, members of one of the most distinguished intellectual institutions in the country, the Ateneo de Madrid, also attended under a ‘reptile fund’ given to them by the Ministerio de Gobernación (Interior Ministry), according to José Prat, an ateneísta himself. They sat alongside ateneístas from the Ateneo de Sevilla and the Ateneo de Huelva. Amongst the three thousand spectators, Juan Herrera, the critic for Diario de Córdoba, found it necessary to highlight the presence of ‘many ladies’ in the crowd (see p. 199).

The arrival of the Second Spanish Republic offered an opportunity for initiating integral socio-political reforms. Education and Culture, Women's Rights, Agrarian Reform, Militarism, Territory, Labour, and Secularism were the seven main areas in which the Republic had to demonstrate practical capacities beyond an inspiring rhetoric. These areas were primarily addressed in the first two years of its existence, between April 1931 and the elections in November 1933. These are to be considered as the years of republican nation-building, which would later be amended or revitalised by subsequent governments, and which founded many of the aspirations, claims, troubles and grievances to later permeate the Spanish Civil War. Given this convulsive atmosphere of socio-political change, how did the audience at Mérida, and those in its subsequent tour, establish connections or comparisons between Seneca's Medea and the fundamental political and social changes the Spanish nation was undergoing?

Spain reflected itself in Seneca's Medea as a socio-political mirror, in which different social groups could visualise their own interests, concerns and hopes, however clear or distorted these may have appeared. All seven areas of reform can be seen as echoed in some way in the performance, the text of Seneca's Medea, or even its Roman origins or location in Mérida. For example, agrarian reform appears connected to Seneca's Medea in the opposition press when Mérida is mentioned as having been a Roman town, Emerita Augusta, whose land was granted to retired Roman soldiers: ‘So does that mean that the Agrarian Reform is a Roman thing?’, asks Gracia y Justicia. Elsewhere in the same issue one can read: ‘the Agrarian Reform is Azaña's best work after Medea and La Corona’, the latter being a play written by Azaña in reality. It is not necessary to document again here how Seneca's Medea became emblematic of the broad reform on education and culture under the Republic (see pp. 116–47). The presence of many military officers loyal to the Republic in Mérida on the eve of the trial of the civic-military conspiracy of the Sanjurjada, alongside the close identification of Seneca's Medea with the new republican regime, also point towards a subtext that coincides with the Republic's efforts in military reform.

Many of the reviews of Seneca's Medea considered the production to be one of the most important and transcendent of its time, a memorable day in the history of the Spanish stage, a view expressed enthusiastically in La Voz:

Seneca's Medea was the pièce de résistance, even a true coup de théâtre, in Spain's own theatrical renovation at the hands of the Xirgu-Borràs Company, with Rivas Cherif at its helm: ‘The modernization of the theatrical landscape that she [Xirgu] fostered in the 1930s in her association with director Cipriano de Rivas Cherif cultivated a dramatic renaissance in the 1920s and 1930s not seen since the Golden Age of Calderón, Tirso de Molina and Lope de Vega’, María Delgado states. Xirgu and Rivas Cherif indeed spearheaded what has been known as the Silver Age of Spanish Theatre. Between 1930 and 1935, while at the Teatro Español, they became the catalyst for a myriad of theatrical synergies. This was the time of the resurgence of theatrical classics and the consolidation of avant-garde international and national authors. They also initiated a profound reform in stage design, and helped to consolidate the director as the orchestrating figure in a production. Medea's own director, Rivas Cherif, would be called in 1935, nearing the end of this era, ‘the first great national stage director’, and ‘nowadays the most prestigious, the most praiseworthy theatre director in Spain’.

In December 1932, the Ministro de Instrucción Pública, Fernando de los Ríos, remarked to Unamuno how Seneca had been neglected as a tragic author in contrast to his popularity as a philosopher. Unamuno agreed with the Minister's observation and accepted to translate one of Seneca's tragedies. In accordance with the Minister's insistence on Seneca, Xirgu chose his Medea. The production of Seneca's Medea thus came into being. The centrality of the Minister's promotion of Seneca as a tragedian to the staging of Medea was therefore key to the whole production. But, was there a real necessity to revitalise the Roman philosopher as a tragedian? Was there a true perceived neglect of Seneca's tragic work in Spain that prompted the need for its redressing? Through an exploration of the reception of Seneca in Spain, both as a philosopher and as a tragedian, we shall be able to confirm or deny the Minister's and Unamuno's intuition and understand how Seneca's tragic vindication took shape. This will in turn help us to understand the role Seneca played in the minds and cultural history of Spain and its connection with Unamuno and the performance of Medea in 1933. To end, this chapter asks how the Spanish reappraisal of Seneca fits the broader reconfiguration of republican national identity.

Before we begin, it is important to address the idea of Lucius Annaeus Seneca being, in a way, two Senecas: the philosopher, or Seneca moralis, and the tragedian, or Seneca tragicus. This idea's remote origins probably stem from the work of the influential Gallo-Roman scholar and diplomat Sidonius Apollinaris (Carmina, IX 230–38), who misunderstood Martial's verses – ‘eloquent Corduba talks of the two Senecas and the one and only Lucan’ (Epigrammata I, 61, 7–8) – as a demonstration of two separate authors, that is, a Seneca moralis and a Seneca tragicus, and not father and son. The distinction proved perennial. It has only been effectively discarded in the twentieth century, by a vindication of the value of Seneca's tragedies within his overall corpus, to which the staging of Seneca's Medea in 1933 fully contributes (see pp. 220–21 and 223–27).

The republican sentiment at the premiere of Seneca's Medea on 18 June 1933 in Mérida, attended by the Prime Minister of the Republic, Manuel Azaña himself, was so acute that an anonymous cry cut through the performance: ‘Long live republican art!’. Two ministers accompanied the Prime Minister in Mérida, as well as a great number of MPs from the main republican parties and many national and regional authorities. The republican national anthem was played as the governmental committee entered the Roman Theatre. The President of the Republic himself, Niceto Alcalá Zamora, watched, in September 1933, the performance of Seneca's Medea at the Royal Palace of the recently dethroned Bourbon Monarchy, accompanied by three more ministers. It is thus clear that, in addition to the public funding of 50,000 pesetas it received, the Second Spanish Republic, as a state, government and new national culture, Hispanitas, positioned all its weight and influence firmly behind its active sponsorship of the production of Seneca's Medea in 1933.

Given all its republican echoes and national ceremonial grandeur, how did Seneca's Medea fit and develop the republican regime change, specifically the cultural agenda and policy of the Republic's constituent period (April 1931–November 1933)? To answer this, we shall first explore how the new regime was ideologically shaped by the intended role of culture in the implementation of educational reform and the reinforcement, restructuring and dissemination of culture, with a special emphasis on theatre. Secondly, we shall examine how Seneca's Medea is central to the Republic's pursuit of a Spanish National Theatre, national unity, and ethical improvement through aesthetic means. Finally, we shall look at how the association of Seneca's Medea with the Second Spanish Republic was contested by voices contrary to the new regime, thus revealing its intertwined nature. Seneca's Medea will thus appear as playing a most relevant role within the agenda of regime consolidation, educational dissemination, promotion of culture, and theatrical renovation, as pursued by the first government of the Second Spanish Republic.

A Republic of citizens: Culture and education

The Republic's counter-hegemonic vision came to guide Spain's future away from its traditionalist, Catholic, monarchical, and authoritarian path and into democracy, secularism, civil rights, culture, and modernity, from Hispanidad to Hispanitas, as seen.

Seneca's Medea and the Second Spanish Republic

On 18 June 1933 Seneca's tragedy Medea was performed before more than three thousand spectators in the ruins of the Roman Theatre in Mérida, Western Spain. This production of Seneca's Medea, translated by the philosopher Miguel de Unamuno, produced by Spain's leading theatre company, the Xirgu-Borràs Company, and backed by the government of the Second Spanish Republic, became one of the most important theatre performances in Spanish history.

The town of Mérida, once the Roman Emerita Augusta, received hundreds of visitors to witness the great spectacle that was Seneca's Medea. Locals and nearby townsmen and townswomen were joined by national intellectuals, republican Members of Parliament, the ambassadors of Italy, Portugal and Uruguay and three representatives of the government of the Second Spanish Republic: the Prime Minister, Manuel Azaña, the Ministro de Instrucción Pública (Minister of Education and Culture) at the time, Francisco Barnés, and the Ministro de Estado (Foreign Minister), Fernando de los Ríos. The whole event became not only a memorable performance but also a republican celebration in its own right, with the governmental committee being cheered as they arrived at the Roman Theatre, while the republican national anthem, the ‘Himno de Riego’, was being played.

The Xirgu-Borràs Company produced and performed Seneca's Medea in Mérida. In it, its leading actress, Margarita Xirgu, played a red-clothed Medea, who enacted her pain, witchery and revenge before those assembled, finally killing the children of Jason, performed by a convincingly overwhelmed and scared Enric Borràs. The Orquesta Filarmónica de Madrid, led by the maestro Bartolomé Pérez Casas, provided a suitable musical pathos with Gluckian illustrations (see pp. 42, 243–47). The performance ended in a climax of theatrical spectacle in which an escaping Medea, on her dragon-led chariot, chased by a maddened torch-holding crowd, disappeared behind the columns of the scaenae frons while the orchestra played the prelude to Gluck's Alceste. The audience roared with emotional cheering and applause as the tragic curtain fell. The performance was a success and received much praise from all present. After all, a tragedy of the potency of Medea, authored by Lucius Annaeus Seneca, the philosopher from Córdoba, translated by a leading intellectual, Miguel de Unamuno, funded by the Republic and performed by the renowned Xirgu-Borràs Company had been staged at the ruins of the Roman Theatre of Emerita Augusta, a renewed theatrical stage after centuries of silence.

On 18 June 1933 Seneca's Medea was performed in the town of Mérida, once Emerita Augusta, in the region of Extremadura, Western Spain. It was a spectacular production undertaken by the Xirgu-Borràs Company and funded by the government of the Second Spanish Republic. More than three thousand spectators watched in admiration, expectation and awe how Medea's revenge unfolded on the stage of the Roman Theatre. All present experienced a communion that united the townsmen and townswomen of Mérida and its surroundings, with national intellectuals and MPs, the Italian Ambassador, two government ministers and the Prime Minister of the Second Spanish Republic. The performance of Seneca's Medea thus became one of the most memorable and meaningful theatrical productions and cultural events of the Second Spanish Republic and of the entirety of Spanish history:

This historical production came to encapsulate, develop or provoke an immense array of themes, theories, ideologies, conflicts, changes, and aesthetic practices that laid it at the very heart of the constituent years of the Second Spanish Republic (1931–33). As if an act of sorcery itself, the performance, at times wittingly, on many occasions unwittingly, came to exorcise, invoke, enchant, bewilder, possess and even annihilate the ideological, socio-political and cultural spectres of the Second Spanish Republic.

Its inception responded directly to the perceived need to reinstate the dramatic might of Spain's most ancient intellectual, poet, dramaturge and philosopher, thus redressing the historical and cultural bias in favour of Seneca the philosopher as the proto-Christian national sage. The production of Seneca's Medea came to exorcise the old regime's conception of the nation by invoking the spirit of a renewed Seneca Hispanicus, so that it might contribute to the new national endeavour, the pursuit of a republican nationalism based on secularism, liberty and the progressive continuum of Spanish culture, art and letters, here termed Hispanitas:

ON SEPTEMBER 23, 1904 a new adaptation of Frank Wedekind's Erdgeist premiered at the Neues Theater in Berlin, directed by Max Reinhardt. The production starred Gertrud Eysoldt in the lead as Lulu and, contributing to its novelty, it featured Wedekind himself as the Tierbändiger (animal tamer) in the prologue. At the beginning of the play, Wedekind stepped out from behind the curtain dressed in an iconic ringmaster's costume to deliver the opening lines (figure 3.1):

The poetic monologue rehearses a well-established opposition between animal and man, who is made master by his intellect and soul. The animal's subjugation on display promises to affirm man's superiority. The Berliner Morgenpost reports that Wedekind “praised the beasts of his circus, all of which he commanded, and introduced a delectable rarity, a poisonous snake: Ms. Eysoldt was carried onto the stage in the pierrot costume of the first act.” The Tierbändiger continues: “She was made to incite calamity / to lure, to seduce, to poison— / to murder without anyone feeling a thing.” To demonstrate his lack of fear and his complete mastery over the deadly creature, he then scratches under her chin like a house pet as he calls her “my sweet beast” (ibid.).

With the overt equation that Wedekind draws between the figure of Lulu and animal predators in the dramatic prologue to Erdgeist it is fitting that reviews of the 1904 stage production also used zoomorphic rhetoric. Critics wrote about “Ms. Eysoldt the all-conquering snake,” or the “snake-woman in the guise of Lulu-Eysoldt.” They praised Eysoldt's performance in the role, to which she brought her “her snake-like grace [Schlangengrazie].” For others, Eysoldt's Lulu was perhaps too convincing and too naturally assimilated. A reviewer for the Volkszeitung comments: “With what uncanny naturalness she plays this snake in human form, this woman, who without conscious reflection coldly steps over the corpses of the men who worship her, and in the end drives the only man who ever loved her to ruin and fires a pistol at him.”