diced b Jos e S. Arc a, - non

apparently in the degree it was thought but even much more. This is shown inthe work we are concerned with, first presented in 1837 in Madrid, then inValencia in 1846, and finally in Almeria in 1883. The hero of the play is acertain Fray Froilan, the confessor of Charles II, whom the author paints "insupercharged colors going beyond the anticlerical animus characteristic ofthe literary world of his time." The friar meddled... not only in the royal conscience, but in all the affairs of the realm ... besides,hie a quarrelsome friar, sexually obsessed by the young Ines, and, desperate ather refusal, victimized her before the Inquisition. Florencio, her fiance, alsoincarcerated by the Inquisition through the Fray Froilan's machinations, wentmad and finally stabbed the friar's lustful heart."'Each stage presentation so excited the audience that they usually reactedwith unrestrained signs of their anticlericalism. For example, in 1883, afterthe final riot scene, a spectator from the front row asked that Fray Froilan bekilled again. And "Florencio went back on stage brandishing the dagger, andthe audience retired quietly," according to El Imparcial on 16 December1883.Did Rizal watch the play? Did he, at least, read the news and its pressreview? There is no evidence except that in January 1884 he sent his familythat issue of El Imparcial. Anyway, the parallels between Rizal's novel andthis theatrical piece are obvious. The key is the climax that resolves the pentuptension in the relationship between Fray Damaso and Crisostomo Ibarra,when the latter "reached for a sharp knife as he kept his foot on the friar'sneck," as he was about to stab the Franciscan had Maria Clara not intervenedand prevented a sacrilegious murder.14. Francisco Pi y Margall. Las Luchas de Nuestros Dias (Madrid: Tip.de Manuel G. Hernandez, 1884)Identifying the writers and works that influenced Rizal and the writing ofhis novel may not always be easy, but there is one about whom there is not theleast doubt: Francisco Pi y Margall. Of the numerous publications by themost important figure of the revolutionary ideologues of 1868, what causedthe greatest impact on the restless and inquisitive mind of the young Filipinostudent was, without doubt, Las Luchas de Nuestros Dias, reedited severaltimes in the second half of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentiethcentury.100