Page:Plays by Jacinto Benavente - Second series (IA playsbyjacintobe00bena).pdf/21

 detail with the significance of the greatest, and makes his work in its totality one of the most human documents that literature has known. Benavente's is the most sophisticated of arts, because it is the flower of an old, anciently corrupt, disillusioned civilization, which has at length awakened spiritually and searched itself, taking account of the evil with what there is of the good, and set itself again to become strong.

The public demands that serious things be treated frivolously, and that nonsense be taken seriously. What it will not tolerate is serious treatment of serious things, or speaking flippantly of nonsense.

Everything that is of importance to the proper understanding of a play must be repeated at least three times during the course of the action. The first time half of the audience will understand it; the second time the other half will understand it. Only at the third repetition may we be sure that everybody understands it, except, of course, deaf persons and some critics.

The public defies comprehension. No, the public is merely curious; but curiosity passes, while respect remains.

He who thinks every day cannot think the same thing every day.

To paint in broad strokes, but so artfully that at a distance it appears as if we had painted in miniature, is at once the problem and the art of the theatre.

One-fourth part of the morality, rectitude, and sense of justice which an audience brings into the theatre would, if left outside, make the world over into paradise.

Prince Hamlet, although the prototype of doubt, like all sceptics had faith in what was most preposterous: the probability that a theatrical performance would disclose anything.

Art is a furious individualist.