Nuevos datos sobre la Lonja de Comedias de la Puerta del Sol (1733–1786)

Abstract

The aim of the present article consists in reconstructing the history of the market of plays that existed at the Puerta del Sol in the 18th century. Along something more than five decades this business acted like diffusion centre of theatre chapbooks, particularly of Golden Age plays, so it contributed in a significant and unique way to sustain not also the the repertoires of the theatres but also the corpus of theatre works by the particular readers interested, still, in the theatre of the previous century. With this intention we have offered a general panorama of the Madrid bookshops of this period specialized in theatre in order to contextualize the plays market. We later have studied the three phases of the business in the hands of three different booksellers and publishers: Hipolito Rodriguez, Teresa of Guzman and Juan Romualdo Rodriguez.