side can be seen the title of the work. Behind the sleeping Goya are bats, owls, a black cat, and what Sayre calls a lynx. All of these creatures appear to represent enemies of light and its metaphors. The lynx, however, likely serves as Goya’s keen-eyed guide through the darkness, in order to ‘‘perpetuate the solid testimony of Truth.’’ At the end of Sayre’s short essay onThe Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, she collects various interpretations:

Prado: ‘‘Imagination forsaken by Reason [sic] begets impossible monsters: united with her, she is the mother of the arts and the source of their wonders.’’ Sanchez: ‘‘When Reason falls asleep, all is filled with phantoms and monstrous visions.’’ Stirling: ‘‘The sleep of Reason begets monsters, and one must be a lynx to decipher their meaning.’’ Simon: ‘‘When men deafen themselves to the cry of Reason, the world is filled with visions.’’

It is perhaps obvious that the above interpretations are similar, interpretations with which Rousseau and Quevedo would likely agree.

It may be noteworthy that Buero Vallejo has left off the predicate, ‘‘produces monsters,’’ from the title to his play The Sleep of Reason. Perhaps it was simply to avoid duplication of Goya’s title, or to keep the reference to Goya’s title less obvious. But there might be another reason: Buero Vallejo was more ambivalent than Goya about what the ‘‘sleep of reason’’ produced. To test this theory, it might be useful, before addressing Goya, to briefly examine the other major characters in whom it can be said ‘‘reason sleeps’’: Calomarde, Ferdinand, Duaso Y Latre, and Leocadia. Calomarde and Ferdinand are never seen sleeping, but their reason appears sleepy in this sense: they believe that revenge will rid them of more enemies than it will produce or inflame. The monsters they ‘‘produce’’ are the five Royal Volunteers, their number and actions almost exactly corresponding to the monsters of Goya’s dream. Father Duaso’s reason can also be said to sleep: he is unaware that his political employer, the crown, is capable of such extreme brutality. Father Duaso does not ‘‘produce’’ monsters but enables the monsters running and representing Spain. This is the reason Goya says that Spain is ‘‘A country at the edge of the grave, whose reason sleeps.’’

Leocadia’s reason might be said to sleep because Doctor Arrieta believes she is overwrought, that Goya’s behavior is driving her toward madness. Without Buero Vallejo judging Leocadia negatively, he might seem to agree. Leocadia is depicted as hysterical, maybe even paranoid, her major motivation for action being fear. She is so overpowered by fear that she understands it as the pinnacle of sanity, portraying Goya’s fearlessness as sanity’s opposite. While overwhelming fear (at least in the United States) is often thought a kind of sickness, an impediment to confidence, ambition, and success, Buero Vallejo’s Leocadia exhibits a fear that is well founded—and she pays for ignoring it when she and Goya are brutalized by the king’s men. Was Buero Vallejo asserting that Leocadia’s ‘‘unreasonable’’ fear was in fact reasonable, that sometimes what may seem like a sleeping reason is the opposite? Still, while Leocadia might have exhibited the sanity of insanity, was her reason awake when she thought Goya’s asleep?

The nature and meaning of reason are uncertain even with Goya himself, whose reason can be said to sleep and not sleep. Was it not asleep when, wideawake, Goya ignored Leocadia’s seemingly unreasonable fears of royal revenge? Was it not asleep, when Goya, fully awake, suspected Leocadia of collaboration and an affair with the sergeant of the Royal Volunteers? And finally, was his reason not napping when wide-awake, he heard the voice of Mariquita urging him to suspect Leocadia of betrayal? But while Goya’s reason slept in terms of reading Ferdinand’s intentions, he was not provided with information about the king’s edict pardoning those who would violate the property of Liberals. And Goya was right that Leocadia had contact with the sergeant who gave her his button. On these counts, Goya’s reason was only partially asleep, combined as it was with imagination. And what of Goya’s dream when his reason is supposed to be fully asleep? While he did dream a monstrous Leocadia-as-Judith, armed with a knife to cut off his head which proved to be untrue, he did produce animal monsters that were amazingly accurate foreshadowings of the Royal Volunteers. Thus, while Goya’s dreams produced monsters, they were not wholly monstrous since a great deal of the dream came true.

Goya’s flying men are a final issue. Were they the product of reason or its slumbering? When Goya first mentions them to Arrieta they seem presentiments of a hundred years into the future. But as Goya continues, he invests the flyers with messianic qualities: ‘‘they’ll come down. To finish off the king and put an end to all the cruelties in the world. Maybe one day they’ll descend like a shining army and knock on every door. With blows so thunderous . . . that even I will hear them.’’ Goya does end up hearing them: between dream and waking the flying men turn out to be those avenging angels, the Royal Volunteers, come to continue, rather than ‘‘put an end to all the cruelties in the world,’’ and ‘‘knocking so loud that even I [Goya] can hear them.’’ By play’s end, Goya shows he has understood the irony: ‘‘Will the flyers come? And if they come, won’t they treat us like dogs?’’ In Goya’s waking visions—while reason slumbered— the flying men appeared almost like angels yet they turned out to be monsters.

Buero Vallejo has added an important variation to Goya’s less complicated title, The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, a complication nearer the Prado Museum’s interpretation: ‘‘Imagination forsaken by Reason begets impossible monsters: united with her, she is the mother of the arts and the source of their wonders.’’ Buero Vallejo might have stated his interpretation as follows: While the sleep of reason may or may not produce monsters, only during wakefulness can a sleeping reason empower them.

Source: Chris Semansky, in an essay for Drama for Students, Gale Group, 2001. Semansky teaches literature and writing at Portland Community College.