I
The brothers Quintero have never made public the details of their private life, and no article of importance seems yet to have been published concerning them. From a little semi-serious Autobiografía, originally printed in Alma española (1904), and from various other sources, the following facts have been gleaned:
Don Serafín was born on March 26, 1871, and don Joaquín on Jan. 20, 1873, in Utrera, 20 miles from Seville. To this capital the family moved "when the two boys together measured a yard in height", and there they attended the Instituto. Their dramatic talent appeared at the earliest possible age, and they composed and acted plays in the patio of their own house before any other stage could be provided. Their ages were 16 and 15 when Esgrima y amor, a farce, was produced at the Teatro Cervantes in Seville (Jan. 30, 1888). Their father took them to Madrid in October of the same year, in order to give their talents a broader field. Success did not come at once. For nine years, to provide a livelihood, they held positions in the Treasury department (Hacienda). During this period they labored desperately at writing, rising at dawn to get in some hours before the office work began at eight. They founded a weekly paper, El pobrecito hablador, which was respected and admired, but was not a financial success. Their writing was done at first over the signature El diablo cojuelo. In the Autobiografía they speak in feeling terms of the ten years of severe and unrewarded labor which laid the foundation of their later popularity. Before the appearance of El ojito derecho, their first hit, they had only three plays produced in Madrid, all very ordinary farces. But they must have been storing up material for future use, for in 1900 they declared[B] that they had 51 plays on hand in manuscript. In 1897 the "entremés" El ojito derecho and the one-act comedy La reja attracted favorable notice; they were both in the vein which has given them most popularity, namely, the depiction of Andalusian customs. In 1898 a musical comedy, La buena sombra, completed the victory, and since that date they have seen produced, between long and short, an average of nearly five plays a year. In 1900 Los galeotes, a four-act comedy, and their first full-sized piece, was crowned with the approbation of the Spanish Academy, but not until about 1904 do we find the brothers Quintero accepted on a par with Benavente as entitled to rank among the chief figures of modern Spanish literature. In 1907 they were both presented with the cross of Alfonso XII. Don Serafín was elected to the Academy on March 27, 1913. The brothers spend their winters in Madrid, and their summers in the quaint northern town of Fuenterrabía, where they find ideal conditions for composition and rest.[C]
[Footnote B: In a letter to the Heraldo de Madrid. See Ilustración española y americana, 1900 (II) p. 258.]
[Footnote C: The Teatro Álvarez Quintero, which has recently been founded in Madrid, receives from them only its name; they have neither financial nor managerial connection with it.]
The collaboration of the two brothers has excited wonder in many, for it approximates to mutual thought. It is so intimate that it can hardly be imagined possible in any but two persons who have been accustomed to work and think together from childhood. Their intellectual harmony is so perfect that on one occasion, as a test, the younger composed a copla of four lines; the first two were then given to the elder, who completed the stanza with the identical words of his brother. Their method of composition is described by them as a continuous conversation. They plan their plays while walking out of doors, in the morning; thus they discuss characters, outline the plot, division into acts and scenes, and even dialog. When the whole and the details are well in mind, the actual writing is done by don Serafín. He reads the result to his brother as he proceeds, and the latter comments or corrects. Details of style are settled in the same viva voce way, better adapted to the drama than to other forms of composition.
II
When we look over the whole work of these men, we are struck first by their tremendous productivity. The elder of the brothers is now 44, but it is 27 years since their first play was presented. Up to the latest advices (Jan. 1, 1915), they have had performed 91 dramas, comedies, farces and operettas, called by the various names of comedias, juguetes cómicos, entremeses, sainetes, pasos de comedia, zarzuelas, and still others. From 1900 to 1914 they averaged 5 estrenos a year, a record which one knows not whether to commend or to reprove. The conditions of the stage in Spain are such to-day that dramatists are spurred to turn out novelties in order to earn a living. A popular hit may remain on the boards for some time, but after its initial run is over, it is seldom returned to the repertory. But it would be a mistake to ascribe to commercial motives what is a trait of national genius. The race of Lope is not that of Molière, and Spanish literature, in its most characteristic phases, is the work of brilliant improvisers. That exuberance of creation of which Lope de Vega was the perfect exemplar is continued undiminished to-day in Pérez Galdós, Echegaray, Benavente and the Quinteros.
The enormous output of the Quintero brothers includes an equally impressive variety. They have attempted almost every known kind of comedy in prose (never in verse) from the screaming farce (Las casas de cartón, El nuevo servidor) to the grand comedy in which there is a strong tragic element (La casa de García, La zagala). One may very roughly divide the mass into plays short and plays long, or, in Castilian el género chico and el género grande.
The short dramatized picture of national customs known as entremés or sainete has as continuous and glorious a history as any literary genre in Spain, including as it does the names of Lope de Rueda (16th century), Cervantes, Quiñones de Benavente (17th), Ramón de la Cruz (18th) and Ricardo de la Vega (19th). The Quinteros maintain worthily a tradition in which the great qualities are wit, concision and fidelity to nature, and up to the present writing these short popular sketches represent possibly the greatest perfection of their accomplishment. El ojito derecho (1897) is a classic of horse-trading, and only one of an insurpassable series depicting Andalusian life among the lower classes. The famous El patio (1900) draws an enchanting picture of domestic arrangements in a house in Seville.[D] La buena sombra, El flechazo, Los chorros del oro, Sangre gorda and very many others, which, like those previously cited, are written in the Andalusian dialect, are thumb-nail sketches caught in the streets and patios of Seville. But, following the lead of Ricardo de la Vega, the Quinteros have woven a thread of sentiment into their scenes from popular life, and thus given them a relief and truthfulness which the sainetistas of the earlier centuries would have scorned to consider possible. La pena, El chiquillo, Nanita, nana are masterpieces, pure and simple, of sincere, unexaggerated realism, and one knows not where to turn for a parallel, unless to Dickens, who touched childhood with a hand more loving than any other's.