Themes, Characters and Ideas in the First Decade of the Benavente’s Theatre: Evolution and Intertextualities

Abstract

Jacinto Benavente’s theatrical innovation established one of the bases of dramatic writing that was afterwards continued by other authors of the Spanish twentieth century. Never- theless, his nowadays well-known middle-class comedy was the outcome of a complex evolution that began with an exploration of affairs and ideas which practically have not been studied yet. In this work the characters, arguments and intertextualities of the pieceworks that were presented during Jacinto Benavente’s first decade (from 1894 to 1905) are analysed.