Ideal Love is a comedic play written in rhymed verse. At first, the title seems to invite readers to enjoy a harmless, prototypical dramatic representation—perhaps the product of the ardent romantic imagination of a young mind. But readers must beware: the author surprises her readers with a daring treatment of familiar themes, situations, and characters—a treatment unconventional to Spanish Neo-Classic and Romantic theater.

Carmen Hernández (1824-1877) dared to do something that for any man or woman in her circumstances was difficult to achieve: she introduced a different, more cryptic meaning to the seemingly familiar words and actions represented on her stage. In Ideal Love, she presents a world in which the romantic and ideal notions of love that prevailed in her day (and to which the title makes reference) are juxtaposed with a more real portrait of human behavior and emotion.

“The female characters in Ideal Love break the unbreakable rules, they speak of unspeakable things, and they do the undoable things…. After all, Hernández’s women characters are in control of their own destinies.”

This book is printed in the original Spanish side by side with an English translation.