Abstract
This paper traces the evolution of theatrical representations of women in Cervantes’s family from the 19th century to the present, charting their transformation from supporting characters to protagonists and their emergence as historical figures whose dramatized presence carries allegorical significance. This evolution reveals the theater’s dual commemorative function: celebrating cultural icons, particularly literary authors, while responding to shifting social values, specifically regarding women in society and in literature, where treatment moves from erasure and misogyny to feminist recovery. My analysis draws on theories of biography, commemoration, and the theater’s role in investigating the past through archives of information and interpretation, as well as on anachronism and parody as strategies for critically engaging with history. I contend that staging the author serves an active, civic function aligned with post-monumental approaches to heritage that privilege knowledge over glorification. On stage, Cervantes’s life experience can illuminate his work in the context in which it was produced, reflecting societal concerns and the anxieties of the playwrights who commemorate the author while portraying women, either following or breaking with a tradition of characterization.