SOURCE: "The Theater of René Marqués," in Symposium, Vol. XVIII, No. 1, Spring, 1964, pp. 35-45.

In the following essay, Dauster offers a balanced survey of Marqués's major dramatic works, giving particular attention to the development of theme and theatrical device.

Among Puerto Rican dramatists today, René Marqués occupies a unique place. Although widely known for his naturalistic and intensely nationalistic La carreta, he has consistently devoted himself to experimenting with dramatic techniques. La carreta and Palm Sunday are his only dramas in an overtly realistic framework; they are neither his best nor his most typical work, which is characterized by shifting temporal relationships and by extreme use of such devices as flashback, integrated offstage effects, and the extensive use of lighting for dramatic purposes. This characteristic technical orientation is clear in his earliest work, the one-act El hombre y sus sueños, which bears the subtitle...