Page:The great Galeoto; Folly or saintliness; two plays done from the verse of José Echegaray into English prose by Hannah Lynch (IA greatgaleotofoll00echerich).djvu/12

 did but accommodate the adoption of the natural bent of its own still mediæval nature. For modern Spanish romanticism belongs more probably to the sixteenth than to the nineteenth century. It is interesting to note the rebound with which Victor Hugo's bell cast this semi-civilised and dreaming people back into their own appropriate century. They prate to-day in Madrid glibly enough of English improvements, clubs, electricity, French vaudevilles, and all the pernicious refinements of our modern civilisation. But these elements are extraneous, a sort of diverting masquerade in their daily life. At heart they are purely mediæval. In all the great moments on and off the stage, they forget the silk hat and coat of civilisation, and walk and talk as if a sword still absurdly cocked the cloak of romance.

In this hour, when foreign Shakespeares are springing up around us with incredible profusion, it would be an agreeable task to come forward with a Spanish Shakespeare. But Don José Echegaray is no such thing. He bears no resemblance to the new geniuses hailed with such delight. He has none of the subtlety of Maeterlinck, and certainly offers entertainment by means of tricks less reminiscent of our start in modern languages. His literary baggage reveals neither the depth nor the flashes of luminous thought with which Ibsen startles us through an obscurity of atmosphere, a childish baldness, and an unconventional disregard of all the old-fashioned theories upon which the laws of dramatic criticism have been formed. But if Echegaray is less original, he is creditably more sane. The lack of depth viii