This is the first comprehensive study of the theater of nineteenth-century Spain, a country that produced more than 10,000 plays in the course of the century. David Thatcher Gies reevaluates the canon of texts, uncovering dozens of plays and authors previously ignored by critics, and placing them in the social and political context of their times. His book provides a readable overview of the known and unknown elements of Spanish nineteenth-century drama, and stresses the vitality of the theater at that time and the strong reactions it aroused in its audiences.