Page:Plays by Jacinto Benavente - Third series (IA playstranslatedf03benauoft).pdf/23

 girlhood, she had derived her vision of the ideal. Under his tutelage, the material world fades away, until, at the end, she sacrifices her youth, her Donina, who dies immediately, and, by the sacrifice, Imperia achieves for herself character, the mastery of the world and all that is in it, which is the realization of her ideal. This ideal, however, when attained, she finds to be spiritual, entailing supremacy over the things of this earth, but not that crown of earthly empire which in her visions she had seen. Professedly a pageant of life upon the Riviera, "Saturday Night" unfolds in five tableaux, each the bold projection of a dominant mood—the first of sophistication and cold indifference, the second of reawakened feeling, reminiscent of the associations of a romantic past, the third of deep revulsion, so complete that no illusion may longer exist, the fourth of tragic resolution, hectic in collapse, while a placid beauty irradiates the fifth with the soft lights of the garden of the spirit, languorous with vistas of the sea down scented avenues of flowers. According to whatever criteria, the drama must be adjudged an extraordinary achievement. The heroine, Imperia, is a sister of the famous courtesan of that name, whose story has been handed down from the Italian Renaissance. The Countess Rinaldi, a companion figure, has also been drawn from a model of the epoch. Reminiscences of the North, too, occur, of the under and circus world which the author understands so well. Furthermore, there is a reflection of his early Russian experiences. The Spanish public was totally unprepared for drama of this content and complexity at the time "Saturday Night" was first presented in 1903, although it was readily perceived from the outset to be an unusual, glamourous, prophetic performance, to which the vague epithet Shakespearean was applied by the critics, in recognition of dimly suspected but hidden, wholly uncomprehended qualities. Having no affiliation with the traditions of Spanish literature or the Spanish stage, it was necessary that a decade should elapse before this remarkable fabric achieved definitive, popular triumph.

"The Prince Who Learned Everything Out of Books," composed for the inauguration of the Children's Theatre at