"The Duchess of San Quintín," translated by Robert M. Fedorchek

Benito Pérez Galdós's The Duchess of San Quintín, A Play in Three Acts, translated by Robert M. Fedorchek. Benito Pérez Galdós (1843-1920), a native of the Canary Islands, is generally considered the greatest Spanish novelist since Cervantes. Some thirty-one novels—highlighted by the masterful Fortunata and Jacinta (Fortunata y Jacinta)—attest to the fact that his oeuvre merits comparison with the works of contemporaries like Balzac, Dickens, Thackeray, and Eça de Queirós. And in five series of historical-fictional National Episodes (forty-six in all) he chronicled the span of the nineteenth century in Spain, from 1805 to the 1890s. But Don Benito, as he was known to many, had, from an early age, an enduring interest in the theater—an interest that he would rekindle in 1892 while at the height of his output of key works grouped under the rubric of “Contemporary Spanish Novels,” an interest, furthermore, that would lead him to write twenty-four plays.  The first three opened to mixed re