he period of political disorder and disturbance which followed the revolution of 1868 in Spain was also a period of disorder and decline for the Spanish stage. The drama—throwing off the fetters of French classicism that paralyzed inspiration at the beginning of the century—had revived for a time. But after its rejuvenescence of the glories of the Golden Age of Spanish literature, uniting a new beauty of form with truth to nature in the Classic-Romantic School, it sank into a debasement hitherto unknown. Meretricious sentiment, dullness, or buffoonery, chiefly of foreign production, occupied the scene before adorned by the imagination, the wisdom, and the wit, of a Zorilla, a Tamayo, a Ventura de la Vega.
José Echegaray
It was at this period of dramatic decadence that Echegaray appeared to revive once more the romantic traditions of the Spanish stage, peopling it again with noble and heroic figures,—in whom, however, the chivalric spirit of the Middle Ages is at times strangely joined to the casuistic modern conscience. The explanation of this is perhaps to be found in part in the mental constitution of the dramatist, in whom the analytic and the imaginative faculties are united in marked degree, and who had acquired a distinguished reputation as a civil engineer long before he entered the lists as an aspirant for dramatic honors. Born in Madrid in 1832, his earlier years were passed in Murcia, where he took his degree of bachelor of arts, applying himself afterward with notable success to the study of the exact sciences. Returning to Madrid, after enlarging his knowledge of his profession of civil engineer by practical study in various provinces of Spain, he was appointed a professor in the School of Engineers, where he taught theoretical and applied mathematics, finding time however for the production of important scientific works, and for the study of political economy and general literature. On the breaking out of the revolution of 1868 he joined actively in the movement, taking office under the new government as Director of Public Works, and holding a ministerial portfolio. He took office a second time in 1872, and later filled the post of Minister of Finance, which he resigned on the proclamation of the Republic. Retiring from public life, he went to Paris; and while there wrote, being then a little past forty, his first dramatic work, 'The Check-Book,' a domestic drama in one act, which was represented anonymously in Madrid two years later, when the author for the third time held a ministerial portfolio.
'The Check-Book' was followed in rapid succession by a series of productions whose titles, 'La Esposa del Vengador' (The Avenger's Bride), 'La Ultima Noche' (The Last Night), 'En el Puño de la Espada' (In the Hilt of the Sword), 'Como Empieza y Como Acaba' (How it Begins and How it Ends), sufficiently indicate their character. They are of unequal merit, but all show dramatic power of a high order. But on the representation in 1877 of 'Locura o Santidad?' (Madman or Saint?), the fame of the statesman and the scientist was completely and finally eclipsed by that of the dramatist, in whom the press and public of Madrid unanimously recognized a new and vital force in the Spanish drama. In this tragedy the keynote of Echegaray's philosophy is clearly struck. Moral perfection, unfaltering obedience to the right, is the end and aim of man; and the catastrophe is brought about by the inability of the hero to make those nearest to him accept this ideal of life. "Then virtue is but a lie," he cries, when the conviction of his moral isolation is forced upon him; "and you, all of you whom I have most loved in this world, perceiving what I regarded as divinity in you, are only miserable egoists, incapable of sacrifice, a prey to greed and the mere playthings of passion! Then you are all of you but clay; you resolve yourselves to dust and let the wind of the tempest carry you off! ... Beings shaped without conscience or free-will are simply atoms that meet to-day and separate to-morrow. Such is matter—then let it go!"
But the punishment of sin, in Echegaray's moral code, is visited upon the innocent equally with the guilty; and the guilty are never allowed to escape the retributive consequences of their wrong-doing. The pessimistic coloring of the picture would be at times unendurably oppressive, were it not relieved and lightened by the moral dignity of the hero. Echegaray's pessimism is, so to say, altruistic, never egoistic; and the compensating sense of righteousness vindicated rarely fails to explain, if not to justify, his darkest scenes.
Judged by the canons of art, Echegaray's dramatic productions will be found to have many imperfections. But their defects are the defects of genius, not of mediocrity, and spring generally from an excess of imagination, not from poverty of invention or faulty insight. The plot is often overweighted with an accumulation of incidents, and the means employed to bring about the desired end are often lacking in verisimilitude. Synthetic rather than analytic in his methods, and a master in producing contrasts, Echegaray captivates the imagination by arts which the cooler judgment not seldom condemns. His characters too are not always inhabitants of the real world, and not infrequently act contrary to the laws which govern it. The secondary characters are too often carelessly drawn, sometimes being mere shadowy outlines, while an altogether disproportionate part of the development of the plot is intrusted to them.
On the other hand, in the world of the passions Echegaray treads with secure step. Its labyrinthine windings, its depths and its heights, are all familiar to him. Here every accent uttered is the accent of truth; every act is prompted by unerring instinct. Nothing is false; nothing is trivial; nothing is strained. The elemental forces of nature seem to be at work, and the catastrophe results as inevitably from their action as if decreed by fate.
The genius of Echegaray, which in its irregular grandeur and its ethical tendency has been not inaptly likened by a Spanish critic to that of Victor Hugo, rarely descends from the tragic heights on which it achieved its first and its greatest triumphs; but that its range has been limited by choice, not nature, is abundantly proved in the best of his lighter productions, 'Un Critico Incipiente' (An Embryo Critic). Of his achievement in tragedy the culminating point was reached—after a second series of noteworthy productions, among them 'Lo Que no Puede Decirse' (What Cannot be Told), 'Mar Sin Orillas' (A Shoreless Sea), and 'En el Seno de la Muerte' (In the Bosom of Death)—in 'El Gran Galeoto' (The Great Galeoto), represented in 1881 before an audience which hailed its author as a "prodigy of genius," a second Shakespeare. Other notable works followed,—'Conflicto entre Dos Deberes' (Conflict between Two Duties), 'Vida Alegre y Muerte Triste' (A Merry Life and a Sad Death), 'Lo Sublime en lo Vulgar' (The Sublime in the Commonplace); but 'El Gran Galeoto' has remained thus far its author's supreme dramatic achievement. In its title is personified the evil speaking which not always with evil intent, sometimes even with the best motives, slays, with a venom surer than that of the adder's tongue, the reputation which it attacks; turning innocence itself by its contaminating power into guilt.