Page:Plays by Jacinto Benavente - Second series (IA playsbyjacintobe00bena).pdf/19

 degenerate. The heroine is enmeshed in a snare of artificialities, seeking for truth amid environments that are most thoroughly false, from the pretentiousness of the Court through the pretenses of the theatre and the mimicries of the demi-monde, down to Bohemia and the underworld, counterfeits which are most deceptive of all.

Simple while it is most complex, brilliant in wit yet engagingly human, exact in portraiture yet at every moment incomparably suggestive, "Princess Bebé" floats before the eyes of the spectator like a web of delusions so transparent that they become luminous as truth. If the basis of reality when disclosed seems little more substantial than the unreality of appearances, it must be remembered in mitigation that the hopes of youth are high. In the words of Professor Federico de Onís, "this type of comprehensive interpretation, which plumbs the evil in humanity later to affirm the idealistic, has been the essence of what is called Spanish realism; it is the æsthetic conception of Vel*azquez and of Cervantes. The work of Benavente is a modern form of the same conception, and is, therefore, essentially Spanish in spirit." It is strange to one familiar with the national history that the modern Spanish writers who have attracted most attention abroad should have been those of the florid tradition of Murillo and of Calder*on, of Echegaray, and of Blasco Ib*añez, rather than of the high Castilian stock.

"Autumnal Roses," presented at the Teatro Español in 1905, is a comedy of Madrid life. Even before he is a Spaniard, Benavente is a Madrileno. He has drawn in this play a veracious picture of the financial circles of the capital city, of the manners of the upper middle class, which is exceptional in its simplicity. No drama could be more innocent of adventitious appeal, yet during the decade which followed its production, "Autumnal Roses" has assumed by common consent a foremost place in the contemporary Spanish theatre. It is characteristic of Benavente's plays that they grow upon the mind; not only by repetition, but through the subtlety of its charm, each succeeding play seems to cast some reflection upon and to illuminate unsuspected recesses in those which have preceded it. Properly, the comedy is the complement, or, in a sense, the sequel to "Princess Bebé," which it follows almost directly in order