Author: Tomás y Estruch, Francisco

Title: El gabán del niño-rey. Episodio en un acto y dos cuadros originales en verso

Genre: theater

Age: Contemporary Age

Description: Description: Published in 1893 by the Administración del Teatro Instructivo de Barcelona in a series of performable dramas for children and amateurs, El gabán del niño-rey is a piece aimed to the education of the male children, which advocates an aggressive and authoritarian model of man embodied in the figure of Enrique III, whose words reveal a rather violent tone. In this rewrite of the legend of the king’s mantle, it is remarkable the inclusion of the middle-class in the plot –with allusions to trades such as farmers, merchants or industrialists—, just as the important role that acquire the people in the royal decision of putting an end to noble privileges (Ribao Pereira 2019: 50). As a punishment, noblemen are exiled –an infrequent solution in the rest of the nineteenth-century rewrites of the legend—and the king decides to base his power on the Parliament, to surround himself by counsellors able to stop the abuses of the noblemen and to put all his faith “in God and the fair law” (Tomás y Estruch 1893: 15), sentence that makes explicit the values of civility and religion that this drama intends to transmit. Two copies of this piece are in the Biblioteca Nacional de España (catalogue numbers T/12521(1) and T/12590).

Key characters: Enrique III el Doliente. Plebeian. Page I. Page II. Courtiers. Executioner. The people. Guards.

Resources:

• • • • • Text (Biblioteca de l' Ateneu Barcelonès).
        • Studies:
          • Gómez Alonso, Alejandra Fátima (2021), “Del gabán del rey al rey solito. Enrique III el Doliente al servicio de la infancia”.
          • Ribao Pereira, Montserrat (2019), “El gabán de Enrique III en la narrativa breve decimonónica”, Estudios Humanísticos. Filología, 41: 41-55.
        • Additional bibliography.
        • Media:
          • Gómez Alonso, Alejandra Fátima. Pedagogical rewritings of the legend of Henry III until the 20th century. 
          • Ribao Pereira, Montserrat. The nineteenth-century dramas of the rey doliente. 
        • Links:
          • Real Academia de la Historia. Enrique III.
          • RTVE. Memoria de España-La época de las tragedias (1348-1485).