Jacinto Benavente y Martinez

Jacinto Benavente y Martínez , 1866-1954, Spanish dramatist, b. Madrid. He was awarded the 1922 Nobel Prize in Literature. His best-known play is Los intereses creados (1907, tr. Bonds of Interest, 1917), a farce written on the pattern of the Italian commedia dell'arte. In 1916 he wrote a second part to this play, La ciudad alegre y confiada [the gay and confident city]. La malquerida (1913, tr. The Passion Flower, 1920), on the Phaedra theme, was popular with the public and the critics. His plays fall into four classes: social satires, psychological dramas, children's plays, and allegorical-morality plays. He was at his best in sparkling satires of aristocratic and upper middle-class life.

Bibliography: See study by M. Peñuelas (tr. 1969).

Benavente y Martínez, Jacinto (1866–1954), the most successful Spanish playwright of his day, awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1922. He was the author of over 150 plays and of translations of Shakespeare and Molière. The best known of his works outside Spain are Los intereses creados (1907), which, as The Bonds of Interest, was the first play presented in New York by the Theatre Guild in 1919 (London, 1920); and La malquerida (1913), which, as The Passion Flower, was produced in New York in 1920 (London, 1926). The first makes use of the traditional masks of the commedia dell'arte to depict modern society as a puppet show in which men are moved by the strings of passion, selfishness, and ambition. The second is a rustic tragedy in which a peasant girl succumbs to evil. Benavente's plays mark the transition from the comedies of intrigue made popular by Echegaray to the drama of social criticism implicit in such works as Gente conocida (Important People, 1896), La noche del sábato (Witches' Sabbath, 1903), Los malhechores del bien (The Evil Doers of Good, 1905), a plea for tolerance which attacks misguided charity, and Más fuerte que el amor (Stronger than Love, 1906). Benavente's reputation has declined considerably since his death.