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Jacinto Benavente (1866-1954)
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One of the most important Spanish dramatists of the 20th century and the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1922.
In his early works he exposed prejudices of the upper middle class and society's defects, without being a social reformer. Benavente's second, conservative half of his literary career, is considered a long decline.Benavente wrote over 170 plays.
"He is a rare example of a born dramatist, one whose imagination, by itself, creates in accordance with the laws of the stage, but yet avoids anything theatrical as fully as all other false conventions."
Jacinto Benavente was born in Madrid. He was the youngest of three children of Venancia Martinez, and Mariano Benavente, a noted pediatrician, who admired Shakespeare's works and transferred his interest in plays to his children. Benavente was educated at the prestigious San Isidore Institute, where he started to perform playlets and puppet shows. In 1882 Benavente went to the University of Madrid to study law. After his father's death in 1885, Benavente dropped his studies and started to write essays, sketches, and contributions to journals. In 1890 he joined a theater company as an actor. His first published work was Teatro Fantastico (1892).
An aristocrat and a conservative, Benavente began with plays that broke the moribund melodramatic tradition of José Echegaray (1832-1916). His first dramatic work, El Nido Ajeno (1894), was ignored by the critics, but two years later Benavente established his reputation as a playwright with Gente Conocida. In the following years Benavente created over forty dramas. He removed rhetoric from theatrical language - from verbal language to the setting. Typical for his work was understated style and technical perfection.
Benavente's plays differed greatly from the romantic tradition of José Echegaray, and deeply influenced Spanish theater. He based his work on witty dialogue, which had much in common with the ironical tone of Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw. Especially he satirized the Spanish bourgeoisie. Among these plays were La Comida De Las Fieras (1898), an attack on aristocrats, Lo Cursi(1901), an analysis of the traditional and the counterfeit modern, La Gobernadora (1901), about corrupt provincial politics, La Noche Del Sabado (1903, Saturday Night), set on the Riviera, El Dragon Del Fuego (1904), a satire on imperialism, Los Malhechores Del Bien (1905), about religious hypocrisy, and La Princesa Bebe (1906), about rigid traditionalism and idealistic yearnings.
In the late 1890s Benavente joined the innovative group of modernist writers known as the Generation of '98, which sought to revive Spain's prestige after its defeat in the Spanish-American war. He was named in 1899 editor of the journal Vida literaria, a voice of the Generation of '98. Later he also wrote for the Madrid newspaper El Imparcial. In 1920 Benavente was named director of the Teatro Español, Spain's national theater. When the Spanish Civil war broke out, Benavente was under house arrest - his sympathies were on Franco's side (see Camilo José Cela.)
Benavente gained international fame with Saturday Night, which ran for two years in New York. Another internationally acclaimed play was La Malquerida, (1913, The Passion Flower). In the rustic drama incestuous hate and love between stepfather and stepdaughter lead to violence and murder. In spite of being mostly faithful to his own themes and style, Benavente followed contemporary European drama and introduced themes and dramatic conventions employed by other famous playwrights. He also experimented with fantastic, symbolist, and surrealistic trends.
During his career Benavente published nearly 200 works. Among his best plays is Los Intereses Credoa (1907, The Bonds of Interest), which resembles a puppet drama and utilizes the conventions of the commedia dell'arte. The hero of the story is Crispín, a crafty servant, who manipulates a group of people with invisible strings. He dupes the respectable citizens of a sixteenth-century city into believing that his impecunious master is a fabulously rich nobleman traveling incognito on a secret diplomatic mission. Benavente himself occasionally played the role of the puppet master in subsequent revivals. La malquerida draws from classical mythology, and was later made into a Broadway production and a film. Benavente's sequel for The Bonds of Interest, La Ciudad Alegre Y Confiada, was written in 1916.
Benavente became a member of the Spanish Academy in 1913. His later works tended toward sentimentality and conservatism, and some young writers, such as as the novelist Ramón Pérez de Ayala, protested when Benavente received the Nobel Prize. Benavente declined to attend the ceremonies, and the prize was accepted by the Spanish ambassador to Sweden. Among Benavente's works after World War I are La Vestal De Occidente (1919), a study of Queen Elizabeth I and her love for Essex, La Noche Iluminada (1927), inspired by Shakespeare, Pepa Doncel (1928), a psychological study of social climbers, and La Infanzona (1945), about incest. In addition to his dramatic work, Benavente wrote literary and social criticism. His support to the Franco regime did nothing to polish his international standing. Benavente died in Madrid on July 14, 1954. He never married.
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