[In the following review, Aggor praises Michael Thompson's translation of Buero Vallejo's Un soñador para un pueblo.]

Any serious project undertaken to advance accessibility to and interest in the works of Antonio Buero Vallejo beyond the category of Spanish speakers must be celebrated. Buero's drama, studded with artistic excellence and innovation, embodies a transcendental, indispensable message ever pertinent to humanity. Michael Thompson's A Dreamer for the People is of particular significance, for it is the piece that inaugurated Buero's series of history plays, a series in which the playwright persistently creates the need for a reassessment of history as protection against the repetition of past tragedies.

The first translation into English of Un soñador para un pueblo, Thompson's work is a bilingual edition, with the Spanish version on the facing pages. The original Spanish is taken from the Espasa-Calpe edition (Colección Austral) published in 1972 and reprinted in 1989. In addition to the text itself, the book contains a solid, thirty-page introduction, a short list for further reading, notes, and a number of illustrations.

The introduction is systematic, lucid, and comprehensive. Thompson focuses on the admirable sense of balance in Buero, stating that amidst a contemporary era of anti-tragic theatrical innovations (absurdist, postmodernist, and so on) Buero has distinguished himself by reaffirming the ‘meaningfulness of human existence’ by means of the complex mechanism of modern tragedy. Thompson surveys the background of the Spanish historical theatre and presents Buero as the ‘supreme exponent’ of historical drama that privileges serious revaluation of well-known historical figures or episodes. He examines methodically the principal sources of the play, which consist of the classic accounts published by Antonio Ferrer del Río, Manuel Danvila y Collado, and Conde de Fernán-Núñez. In an impressive display of familiarity with Buero's text and its historical sources, Thompson explores in detail how Buero interweaves historical data and anecdotes into the dramatic action of the play and he sporadically points out the dramatic effects produced by the playwright's artistic inventions and his elaboration of history.

While Buero tends to be critical of the ruling classes in his history plays, in Un soñador he defends the monarchy and its technocrats, a position that invites criticism of Buero as endorsing the emerging new face of Franco's dictatorship in the late 1940s, since that face resembled that of eighteenth-century absolutism. But, according to Thompson, Buero himself resists the comparison. Thompson asserts that the play's fundamental ideals are, instead, to contrast the Franco government with Esquilache, the protagonist, on the basis of human-rights principles, tolerance, and self-sacrifice for the sake of peace. Thompson also appraises the mechanisms of theatricality at work in the play by analysing characterization, symbolism, dialogue, and plot structure.

The translation is accurate in the main, reads well, and has largely succeeded in preserving the flavour of the original text. There are, however, a few instances of perhaps excessive imaginative originality on the part of the translator, resulting in awkward translation; such is the translation of the décima on page 44 (I am unable to transcribe the poem here, for lack of space). The work is almost free of misprints but there is something missing in ‘He prided himself upon his ability to see through the falseness of others, yet he has not perceived the true character of Campos or the threat people of Madrid’ (p. 24). My only significant reservation about the book has to do with the poor quality of the print, which is very small, hazy-looking and sometimes faded, thus making the reading experience less enjoyable. Notwithstanding these criticisms, Thompson's translation is basically sound and a useful piece suitable for both the classroom and the library.