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tle their claims. Back in South America in
1541 as governor of the Colombian prov-
ince of Popayán, Belalcázar threw himself
into disputes among the heirs and allies of
Pizarro. As a result of one of his more vio-
lent actions Belalcázar was tried and con-
victed of an unauthorized execution and
died on route to Spain to plead for reversal
of this judgment.
knows, 1896),
El marido de la Téllez
(Mrs.
Téllez's husband, 1897),
La comida de las
fieras
(The beasts' dinner, 1898),
El primo
Román
(Cousin Román, 1901),
Señora ama
(Mistress of the house, 1908), and
La
malquerida
(
The Passion Flower,
1913). From
this period also date two of his undoubted
masterpieces:
La noche del sábado
(
Saturday
Night,
1903) and
Los intereses creados
(
The
Bonds of Interest,
1907). The former is a mix-
ture of fantasy, satire, and “ideas” in which
his emphasis on the power of the will
reflects prevailing Nietzschean concepts. In
the latter, borrowing the style of the com-
media dell'arte and employing heavy sar-
casm, Benavente presents an unusually
bitter satire of the way in which personal
interests govern and deform all elements of
society.
World War I brought a series of political
crises that affected Benavente's popularity.
Already a member of the Royal Academy
(1912), his public utterances, which favored
Spain's support for Germany and reflected
the point of view expressed by the church,
army, and aristocracy, alienated many of his
previous admirers, who felt he had betrayed
his critical and reformist credentials. Bena-
vente, shocked by this overt antagonism,
ceased to write for a time, until the award
of the Nobel Prize stimulated him to new
work. However, in the increasingly embit-
tered environment of the 1920s and early
'30s he continued to meet with criticism
that was as much a reflection of personal
animosity as of artistic concerns. The S
PAN
-
ISH
C
IVIL
W
AR
and World War II sapped his
creative imagination, if not his dramatic
output. The last decade of Benavente's life
saw a resurgence of his inspiration and rep-
utation. Numerous well-received plays
emerged from his pen, three of them in the
Benavente y Martínez, Jacinto
(1866-1954)
Spanish dramatist
In the seemingly endless parade of political
revolutionaries that marches through Span-
ish history, Benavente stands out as an
authentic revolutionary in literature for he
not only demolished the old-fashioned the-
atrics that had long dominated his country's
stages but did much to spread dramatic
realism throughout turn-of-the-century
Europe. His achievements were appropri-
ately recognized by the award of the Nobel
Prize in literature in 1922.
Widely traveled and a keen observer of
society, with an acute ear for the conversa-
tion of bourgeois drawing rooms and an
occasional provincial farmhouse, he pro-
duced nearly 200 plays, to say nothing of
an abundance of essays and anecdotal
memoirs. Benavente's literary fecundity,
inevitably compared to that of L
OPE
DE
V
EGA
, has led some to draw a sharp distinc-
tion between his writings before World War
I and those of his later years. His first play,
El nido ajeno
(Somone else's nest, 1894) was
too “different” from what the playgoing
public was used to to be popular, but com-
mercial and critical success soon greeted a
series of dramas, many of a satirical charac-
ter, such as
Gente conocida
(People one
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