Page:Plays by Jacinto Benavente - Third series (IA playstranslatedf03benauoft).pdf/32

 theatre. "Field of Ermine" and "A Collar of Stars," although of more recent date, may also be listed in the catalogue of psychologic, symbolic drama in which the objective and subjective elements are contrasted with maximum power and effect.

The more important miscellaneous works composed at this period deal predominantly with the influence of character when achieved ("Autumnal Roses"), or with conditions and environments which react upon or inhibit its growth. As in "Señora Ama" and "In the Clouds," neither fact nor environment are of interest in themselves, but are presented as externalizations or postulates of volitional or other human elements. A more strictly psychologic bent further makes its appearance in what may be called comedies of mental states ("Brute Force"), while the lighter one-act comedy of equivocation continues as practised at an earlier day. The best of the one-act pieces belong also to these years.

With "La Malquerida," acted in 1913, Benavente enters upon another phase. As has been well said, the tragedy is not a study in psychoanalysis, but a psychoanalytical play, compact of inhibitions and suppressed desires, so intensively true that it has met with remarkable response both in Spain and in North and South America. Society and the will no longer furnish the theme; indeed, the volitional element has almost entirely disappeared, and we find ourselves enmeshed in a maze of reactions and determinations of the mind, in which the outward world is reduced to the lowest possible terms, the modicum indispensable for bringing the play upon the stage. The dramas of these later years are inexhaustible in variety. "The Evil That Men Do" offers a study of jealousy, "Thy Proper Self" of self-respect. A strange, absorbing projection of mirrored emotions, "A Traitor to All, Yet to All Be Ye Loyal," is concerned with the tragedy of character as reflected entirely from without, imposing itself in the place of the character that is real, as "Our Lady of Sorrows" attains true character within by virtue of a reflected character that is false. Not less moving is the powerfully austere tragedy of indifference and mis-