SANSON, MAGARINOS, AND MARQUEZ.
Placido Sanson, Magarinos Cervantes, and Señor Marquez are among the most conspicuous South American dramatists we can now call to mind. Magarinos Cervantes was born in Montevideo in 1825, and, besides the novels of Caramuru and The Star of the South, has written the dramas of Vasco Nuñez and the Two Passions, besides the comedy of Percances Matrimoniales. He was one of the principal editors of an artistic and scientific cyclopædia printed in Madrid, and was once described as the youngest and most productive of well-known South American writers. Sanson, who was born in Santa Cruz de Teneriffe, 1815, has written ten or eleven dramas, among them Abenhamet and Herman Peraza, and has been an exceedingly industrious editor and translator. Señor Marquez, who was noticed fifteen years ago as a young poet of Lima, but twenty-three years of age, yet of exceeding promise, was known as the author of a drama which derived its title from the beautiful legend of The Flower of Abel.
This flower of dramatic poetry, as its warm admirers regard it, contains a charming and even what we might call a religious moral. One of the best known of its Peruvian critics described it as among the most spiritual creations of the day; a defense of innocence and charity in a heroic combat against the worldly selfishness which devours us; and Markham, to whose good taste we are indebted for information respecting the ancient and modern literature of Peru, affirms that its plot is original and ingenious, and that it is full of good passages. Abel, the first victim of selfishness, is described as "the mysterious messenger of celestial compassion," an angel of innocence. The innocent daughter of a proud and aged veteran becomes the possessor of the angel's flower of Abel—in other words, the blossom of innocence. This the heavenly visitor presents to her in a vision, warning her never to lose nor abandon it, nor let it leave its place in her bosom. But, eventually, the fair girl loses the flower, and wanders far and wide over the world in search of it, passing through many dangers, for she is unprotected and very beautiful. At length, she reaches her mother's grave, and, wearied and imploring, falls at the feet of an image of the Blessed Virgin, in whose hands she once more beholds her lost Flower of Abel. Prostrate before the altar of the Queen of Heaven, the spirit of Elena abandons the body, and is conducted to the skies by Abel, who recovers the mysterious flower and the pure soul of the maiden.
Reflecting that our own American dramatic literature can claim not many successful writers, the portion of Spanish America, in respect to the dramatists we have described, cannot be deemed contemptible. We have much yet to learn of our sister republics, painful though their problem be to democratic thinkers; and we cannot look through a more necessary and suggestive medium than their literature to become acquainted with their moral capacities and possibilities.