Doña Clarines y Mañana de Sol | Page 5

of daily life with a poetic light, and the revelation of Spanish character reminds us once more of the saying that Spaniards, more than any other European people, resemble Americans. It was William Dean Howells who said, in writing of one of the later novels of Palacio Vald��s, that he found in it "a humanity so like the Anglo-Saxon." He would surely extend the statement to the Quintero comedies.
[Footnote F: J. Ernest-Charles, in _L'Opinion_, Dec. 2, 1911: "Tristan Bernard et Michel Corday nous conduisent une fois de plus dans ce monde compl��tement amoral qui est presque le seul que l'on soit admis �� fr��quenter au th��atre."]
In the later plays of the Quinteros one notices an increasing eagerness to impress the beauty of vigorous, right-minded living upon the audience. One must be frank, and say that the most successful plays are those in which the moral is best concealed. They do not always escape the pitfall of bourgeois sentimentality.
In dramatic technic the Quinteros and Jacinto Benavente have introduced in Spain an important change. The drama is the one literary genre in which one looks for action in abundance, for one-piece characters, intrigue, surprise, conflict of passions, climax, then the solution of the knot. Otherwise, of course, the drama is not dramatic. Scribe and Sardou are the arch effectivists, who harrow the spectators' feelings by sheer cleverness or brutality, and so induce him to forget that what he is witnessing is not life. In modern Spain, Echegaray has not disdained the coincidences, duels and other stage effects of this school, combining them with the moral or social problem of Ibsen. Benavente and the Quinteros have sought to discard all factitious devices, and to arouse interest solely by means of natural dialog, suggestive charm, color and accurate characterization. The eternal struggle in art between exact copying of nature and artificial selection and arrangement has swayed to the former side, perhaps farther than was ever before seen in the literature of the stage. Plot is always secondary with these writers, and in fact many of their plays could be denominated speaking tableaux of life better than dramas in the conventional sense. The Quinteros themselves define their theory: "El inter��s subsistir�� por sencilla que sea la acci��n que se forje, siempre que haya un poco de arte en la composici��n. No estribe el inter��s en _lo que pasar��_, sino en lo que pasa. El ideal ser��a que el p��blico, durante la representaci��n de (nuestras) obras, llegara a olvidarse de que se hallaba, en el teatro." (El patio, p. 71.) Intrigue is to be replaced, then, by marvelous rendering of atmosphere and states of character, just as Vel��zquez rendered planes in Las meninas. The personages unfold themselves before us in their natural environment, and we merely observe, like the limping devil, what takes place within their homes.
Perhaps the exclusion of the dramatic has been carried too far,--for the stage has its requirements, and punishes with oblivion those who choose to ignore them. It is true too that artistic selection has not always been duly exercised, and superfluous characters sometimes cumber the stage. Exaggeration may be necessary behind the footlights, as Moli��re believed, and when deprived of it we feel the lack of something, as a Mexican would miss his chile, or a Hindu his curry. Nevertheless, the change from sensationalism is as restful as a congenial fireside to one who has been fighting with strangers for his daily bread. Lack of action is not in harmony with the great dramatic tradition of Spain, and for that reason the reaction against it may be strong. The fact remains that the school of realism in its true sense, of naturalness, light and color is producing some masterly results at this moment.
IV
Of the plays in the present volume, _Do?a Clarines_ is not pretentious, but within its limits it is better worked out than is sometimes the case. It is a character study, sketched in broad lines without over-subtlety. In the exceptionally blunt, straightforward and withal womanly figure of the heroine the Quinteros have created an exceptional personage, certainly, whose striking qualities they have succeeded in reproducing without caricature and with eminent fairness. The person who speaks plain truth at all times and in all places would not be the most agreeable neighbor in the world, perhaps, for few of us can afford to be subjected at every instant to the moral X-ray, and if all human beings were patterned after the protagonist, society, as we know it, could not exist. But the average man leans the other way, duplicity is rampant, and one Clarines in a village is a refreshing acid to cut the prevailing smug concealment of thought. That the straight path is the only safe one is the moral of the play, as it is of Peer