At the beginning of the last act Esteban and El Rubio have gone away, apparently with a vague idea of flight, but they soon return to face justice. Esteban regrets having been an accomplice in murder; El Rubio offers to take the responsibility if Esteban will agree to secure his liberty after a short interval. At this moment Raimunda enters, and accuses her husband of the crime. Together they review their life of the past few years, she criticizing him and he defending himself. He says that he has not been able to endure it; that the presence of the girl Acacia has always made his blood boil; that he has tried to resist, but in vain. If Acacia when a child had only called him father and had loved him, all would have been well. Raimunda takes pity on him when he says this, and assures him that they will live happily after sending Acacia to the house of a relative. Thereupon Acacia enters, and shows hatred and scorn for her stepfather. He is saddened by her attitude, and chides her. Raimunda begs her to call him father, before he gives himself up to justice. Then Acacia can no longer restrain the feelings that she has so long concealed from everybody. Instead of father she calls him Esteban; she embraces him, and Raimunda realizes the final truth. Her daughter has always loved her stepfather. Infuriated, she calls upon everybody within hearing, and tells the dreadful secret. Esteban tries to escape with Acacia, in order to enjoy his newly discovered love. When he finds that he is unable to get away, he fatally wounds his wife, Raimunda. Fatality again places Acacia, the "Ill-beloved," on the side of her mother, and this time forever; Raimunda prepares to die, satisfied with her final victory.
The Latest Plays.—The estreno of a play of Benavente is now one of the principal events of the theatrical year in Madrid. His reputation is securely established, and the public looks to him for the great events of the season. It is true, perhaps, that no play since 1913 has reached the heights achieved by La malquerida and other masterpieces. The keynote of El collar de estrellas, La propia estimación, and Campo de armiño seems to be the building of character. Nowhere else, perhaps, is the author quite so insistent in setting a standard of human virtue. As a natural consequence he paints some personages who come perilously close to being angels or villains. The tendency is quite in line with the progressive development of Benavente's dramatic and intellectual life. Possibly his art has suffered slightly from a desire to exert a good moral influence, but his reflections have become correspondingly more profound and valuable. Moreover, we must not forget his astonishing versatility. He can stop in the midst of a series of didactic plays and compose something like Los intereses creados or La malquerida.[13] Therefore it is fair to assert that each new step in the evolution of his teatro adds to what has gone before without supplanting it.
Replies to Criticism.—Certain criticisms of methods employed by Benavente have been noticed. Replies made by him to unfavorable comment are contained in the following statements:
"If any remorse troubles my artistic conscience, it is because I have often sacrificed art to preaching; but in Spain... it is necessary to preach so much, and the theater is such a good pulpit!"[14]
"And what shall I say of myself? I am the same man that I was in 1897; even my concessions to middle-class sentimentalism, as I could demonstrate with texts, do not belong to the present day alone. And why not? An author has the whole work in which to say what he feels and what he thinks; later, in the conclusion, seeing that life does not conclude anything, why not please the public? If this public, with or without concessions, had not been on my side from the beginning of my dramatic career, could I have continued to present plays? The public was my real support against the critics, who were almost unanimous in affirming that that was not drama."[15]
"No one is more opposed than I am to giving scandal either in books or in conduct. I shall never defend my works as literary works, but I will defend them as works of spotless morality. If in any of them there is anything that may seem sinful in appearance, it is not I who am speaking; it is some person for whose morality I am not responsible. I am accustomed to allow the personages of my works to express themselves according to their character and temperament. Unfortunately these evil characters are the ones who are always closest to the truth. Only God and my artistic conscience know that it is necessary for us to lie when we wish to moralize."[16]
"My life as a dramatic author cannot be remembered without remembering Rosario Pino, the ideal interpreter of so many comedies of mine when my comedies were pleasing only to myself; whereas at present they are pleasing to many people, and not at all to me. And I am more mournful now at not being in accord with the applause, than I was then, when I could not agree with the censure."[17]
Teatro del pueblo.—The opinions of Benavente on various technical and critical matters related to the stage are found in a book of essays called Teatro del pueblo after the first article, which is an argument in favor of the establishment of a free theater for the people. Many of the themes discussed in the book allow the author to give free play to satire and irony. He criticizes savagely theatrical conditions in Spain, favors translations, upholds moving-pictures, one act plays, vaudeville, the circus, photography, etc., at the expense of the legitimate stage; but through it all there appears a man fond of poetry, interested in the lower classes and in children, an artist and a clear-headed man of affairs.
De sobremesa.—It remains only to describe the impression made by Benavente in matters unconnected with the theater. The periodical writings contain more about dramatic criticism than about any other one topic, but they also include a great many discussions of themes of national and world-wide interest; they were naturally affected by the current events of the years 1908-1912. The author of De sobremesa shows himself to be a typical product of modern life. Possessing the cultivation characteristic of intellectual life in a modern European capital, his mind is encumbered by few, if any, illusions. He is both satirical and practical. Irony and hatred for Spanish abuses do not prevent him from exhibiting a pure and noble patriotism. Cosmopolitan as he may be in theories, his nature is essentially and intensely Spanish. It is a genuine comfort to find that the scientific observer of human nature, the man who can make acute comments on the most diversified subjects, can occasionally give way to a noble passion, and even to a pardonable prejudice; not too often, but just often enough to prove that he is human. One cannot turn away from Benavente without feeling that he has been enriched by communion with a master spirit and benefited by association with a broad, clear-thinking, sympathetic nature.
Conclusion.—When an author is still alive, and especially when he is in the prime of life, it is difficult to pass judgment upon him. The future may show an evolution hitherto unsuspected. As far as can be told at present, Benavente's position is unassailable. He has been admitted to the Spanish Academy, he is recognized as one of the leading dramatists of Spain, and many consider him the foremost figure in the modern Spanish theater. Before the outbreak of the European War he was almost universally admired in his native country. The bitterness of international discussion has crept into dramatic criticism, but such a situation should be only temporary. There is every reason to expect that future historians of Spanish literature will reserve a post of honor for Jacinto Benavente.