Doña Clarines y Mañana de Sol | Page 5

Quinteros have undertaken precisely to present the average existence of the bourgeois
and lower classes in an interesting way, instead of racking the audience with problems
that to at least nine people out of ten are no problems at all. Like Dickens, they touch the
comedies and tragedies 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 Valdés, 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 complètement amoral qui est
presque le seul que l'on soit admis à fréquenter au théâtre."]
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 interés subsistirá
por sencilla que sea la acción que se forje, siempre que haya un poco de arte en la
composición. No estribe el interés en _lo que pasará_, sino en lo que pasa. El ideal sería
que el público, durante la representación 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 Velázquez 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
Molière 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, _Doña 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