The nineteenth century's great industrial revolution manifested itself in allaspects of life and public activity. Connected to the vigorous impulse of agrowing and insistently more powerful bourgeoisie, this revolution marks thebeginning of a new era whose central characteristics and principles will bemaintained without substantial alteration until the arrival of the twenty-firstcentury's digital age. In this incipient capitalist society, art and commercebecome inextricably intertwined. Words such as ‘corporation’,‘business’, ‘economy’ and‘profitability’ extend to all social relationships, includingthose in prominent association with culture and art. This chapter will outlinethe rise of the theatre as an industry in nineteenth-century Spain, examiningboth the opportunities created and the constraints introduced by the impositionof a commercial model on theatrical practice, and outlining publishing practicesand governmental policies that at first greatly expanded the industry beforeconcentrating its resources in the hands of a powerful minority. By the secondhalf of the nineteenth century, theatre was more than an aesthetic, moral ornation-building enterprise; it was a business.

No artistic manifestation of this industrial–cultural connection was morepowerful and influential in the nineteenth century than the theatre. Lope'sfamous affirmation that ‘dar gusto al vulgo’ (to please thepublic) was the goal of art became established as the formula of the nationalSpanish classical theatre and remained alive throughout the seventeenth andeighteenth centuries. During the nineteenth century this was furtherconsolidated with the cultivation of an aesthetic of spectacle, high theatrics,and the expansion of offerings that saw theatre patronised by all socialclasses. As in the past, the authorities tried in vain to control the theatrethrough various regulations and restrictions, but the private sector too swiftlyrealised the commercial possibilities of a burgeoning industry whose expansionwas connected to the growth of an urban population for whom the theatre was thepreferred leisure and social activity. The material conditions of the nineteenthcentury created a theatre industry evident both in the literary culture ofediting plays and in the performance event, which responded to the appearance ofnew theatrical spaces as well as the renovation of existing venues. Thecommercial possibilities of the play texts and performances were exploited bythe theatrical impresarios keen to profit economically by offering attractiveproducts to potential clients.