One of the most important Spanish
dramatists of the 20th century and the winner of the Nobel Prize for
Literature in 1922. Jacinto Benavente wrote over 170 plays. In his early works
he exposed prejudices of the upper middle class and society's defects,
without being a social reformer. Benavente's second, conservative half
of his literary career, is considered a long decline. His support
of Franco's regime cast a shadow over his international
reputation.
Lady.
. . . It isn't safe to travel with people who begin to gabble and talk
the minute they lay eyes on you, and tell you all their private affairs
just as if you were one the the family. People ought to be cafeful what
they say. The very least that happens is that they tell you some
scandal or dishonesty or something of the sort about Mr. So and So -
that he is this way or that he is that way, and the next thing you know
he turns out to be your father. And a person who would talk like that
about your father, what wouldn't he say about your uncle or your
cousins or any one else in the family? And there you are! (from No Smoking, translated by John Garrett Underhill, in Adventures in World Literature, edited by Rewey Belle Inglis and William K. Stewart, New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1936, p. 292; original title: No fumadores, 1904)
Jacinto Benavente y Martinez was born in Madrid. He was the youngest
of three children of Venancia Martinez, and Mariano Benavente, a noted
pediatrician, who admired Shakespeare's works and transferred his
interest in plays to his children. Benavente was educated at the
prestigious San Isidore Institute, where he started to perform playlets
and puppet shows. Benavente wanted to become an actor, but his father
did not approve it. In 1882 Benavente went to the University of Madrid
to
study law. After his father's death in 1885, Benavente dropped his
studies and started to write essays, sketches, and contributions to
journals. In 1890 he joined a theater company, but he never became a a
professional actor. For a period he travelled with a circus in
provincial towns. His first
published work was Teatro fantástico (1892), eight sketches based on dreams and fantasies.
An aristocrat and a conservative, Benavente began with plays that broke the moribund neo-Romantic tradition of José Echegaray (1832-1916), whom he has admired. His first dramatic work, El nido ajeno
(1894, Another's Nest), was dismissed by the majority of critics as a
failure, but two years later Benavente established his reputation as a
playwright with Gente conocida. At the same time Echegaray's
popularity began to wane. In the following years Benavente created over
forty dramas with astonishing versality. He removed
rhetoric from theatrical language – from verbal language to the
setting. Typical for his work was understated style and technical
perfection. The emphasis is not on the action but on dialogue and
the psychological twists and turns of the human psyche. In life as upon
the stage, says Princess Bebé, one of his characters, the real
entertainment goes behind the scenes.
Benavente's plays, which deeply influenced Spanish
theater, differed greatly from the romantic tradition of José
Echegaray (1832-1916). (Coincidentally, Echegaray had been a client of
Benavente's father.) His witty dialogue had much in common with the
ironical tone of Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw. He once said:
"The public demands that serious things be treated frivolously, and
that nonsense be taken seriously. What it will not tolerate is serious
treatment of serious things, or speaking flippantly of nonsense." (An Outline of Contemporary Drama by Thomas Herbert Dickinson, 1969, p. 258)
Especially Benavente satirized the Spanish bourgeoisie. Among
these pieces were La comida de las fieras (1898), an attack on aristocrats, Lo cursi (1901), an analysis of the traditional and the counterfeit modern, La Gobernadora (1901), about corrupt provincial politics, La noche del sábado (1903, Saturday Night), set on the Riviera, El dragón del fuego (1904), a satire on imperialism, Los Malhechores Del Bien (1905), about religious hypocrisy, and La princesa Bebé
(1906), in which the heroine seeks truth from the pretentious
surroundings of the Court to the theatre and the underworld. Many plays
were set in Madrid, among them Autumnal Roses (1905), or in Moraleda, a fictitious provincial town in Castilia, the setting of La gobernadora (1901, The Governor's Wife), El primo Román (1901), El marido de su viuda (1908, His Widow's Husband), Pepa Doncel (1928), and others.
In the late 1890s Benavente joined the innovative group of modernist writers known as the Generation of '98,
which sought to revive Spain's prestige after its defeat in the
Spanish-American war. He was named in 1899 editor of the journal Vida literaria, a voice of the Generation of '98. Later he also wrote for the Madrid newspaper El Imparcial. In 1913 became a member of the Spanish Academy. During
WWI, Benavente sympathized with the German cause, which
alienated him from some of his friends, who supported the Allied
Forces. Benavente criticized France's and Britain's infludence on
Spain and argued that Germany and Spain shared the same interests,
while at the same time he emphasized Spanish neutrality. His position
Benavente defended in El año germanófilo (1916), but it has been said that "he was never able to articulate a coherent rationale for his Germanophilism." ('A Civil War of Words: The Ideological Impact of the First World War on Spain, 1914-18' by Gerald H. Meaker, in Neutral Europe Between War and Revolution, 1917-23, edited by Hans A. Schmitt, 1988, p. 20)
The German embassy invited Benavente to visit Germany. The embassy
secretary von Stohrer knew that the playwright had the habit of saying
"yes" to an invitation, but he often would not show up if he had something else to do. In his report he described
Benavente as an
oddball, shy and reserved. (Neutrality in the Balance: Spanish-German Relations During the First World War, 1914–1918 by Anne Rosenbusch, 2015, p. 144)
In 1920 Benavente was named director of the Teatro Español,
Spain's national theater. Sometimes he acted on the stage. When the
Spanish Civil war broke out in 1936, Benavente declared his support to
the Republican cause and left Madrid. He was captured in Valencia and
taken back to his home town where he was set under house arrest. After
the war he "made his peace" with the Franco
regime, which had regarded him as too liberal. In an article entitled
'Al dictacto,' published in the conservative newspaper ABC, he defended
Marshall Pétain's role in the Vichy government, and in a later article
he said that Pétain had been both a sword and a shield to his country. (Benavente and the Spanish Panorama, 1894-1954 by Robert Louis Sheehan, Chapel Hill, N.C. 1976, pp. 160-161)
Saturday Night, which ran for two years in New
York, established Benavente's international fame. Another
internationally acclaimed play was La malquerida (1913,
The Passion Flower). In the rustic drama incestuous hate and love
between stepfather and stepdaughter lead to violence and murder. In
spite of being mostly faithful to his own themes and style, Benavente
followed contemporary European drama and introduced themes and dramatic
conventions employed by other famous playwrights. He also
experimented with fantastic, symbolist, and surrealistic trends.
SILVIA [To the audience]
You have seen in it how these puppets have been moved by plain and
obvious strings like men and women in the farces of our lives—strings
which were their interests, their passions, and all the illusions and
petty miseries of their state. Some are pulled by the feet to lives of
restless and weary wandering; some by the hands, to toil with pain, to
struggle with bitterness, to strike with cunning, to slay with violence
and rage. But into the hearts of all there descends sometimes from
heaven an invisible thread, as if it were woven out of the sunlight and
the moonbeams, the invisible thread of love, which makes these men and
women, as it does these puppets which seem like men, almost divine, and
brings to our foreheads the smile and splendors of the dawn, lends
wings to our drooping spirits, and whispers to us still that this farce
is not all a farce, that there is something noble, something divine in
our lives which is true and which is eternal, and which shall not close
when the farce of life shall close. (from Act III, in 'The Bonds of Interest,' Plays
by Jacinto Benavente, translated from the Spanish with and introduction
by John Garrett Underhill, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1921, p.
112; original title: Los intereses creados: comedia de Polichinelas en dos actos, tres cuadros y un prólogo, 1907)
Benavente published nearly 200 works during his career. "He is a
rare example of a born dramatist, one whose imagination, by itself,
creates in accordance with the laws of the stage, but yet avoids
anything theatrical as fully as all other false conventions." (Presentation
Speech by Per Hallström, Chairman of the Nobel Committee of the Swedish
Academy, on December 10, 1922; NobelPrize.org)
One of Benavente's most acclaimed plays is Los intereses creados
(1907, The Bonds of Interest), which resembles a puppet drama and
utilizes the conventions of the commedia dell'arte. The hero of the
story is Crispín, a crafty servant, who manipulates a group of people
with invisible strings. He dupes the respectable citizens of a
sixteenth-century city into believing that his impecunious master is a
fabulously rich nobleman traveling incognito on a secret diplomatic
mission. Benavente himself occasionally played the role of the puppet
master in subsequent revivals. La ciudad alegre y confiada, the sequel for The Bonds of Interest, was written in 1916. La malquerida
draws from classical mythology, and was later made into a Broadway
production and a film. In the English speaking world, this
play is best known as The Passion Flower. The rural
drama tells of a woman, whose guilty love for her stepfather leads
to the killing of her suitor and her mother.
Benavente lived with his mother until her death in
1922. He
never married but devoted his life primarily to travel and to the
theater. His later
works tended toward sentimentality and conservatism, and some young
writers, such as as the novelist Ramón Pérez de Ayala, protested when
Benavente was honoured with the Nobel Prize. At the time of
the announcement in 1922, Benavente was on a tour of South America
and the United States as artistic director in the theatre company of
the actress Lola Membrives – he was in a remote Argentine railroad
station when the news about the honour reached him. The academy passed
over James Joyce, whose Ulysses came out in February 1922. Benavente did not attend the ceremonies, and the
prize was accepted by the Spanish ambassador to Sweden. Benavente's major works after World War I include La vestal de Occidente (1919), a study of Queen Elizabeth I and her love for Essex, La noche iluminada (1927), inspired by Shakespeare, Pepa Doncel (1928), a psychological study of social climbers, and La Infanzona
(1945), about incest. Between 1920 and 1924 he produced no new
plays. In addition to his dramatic work, Benavente wrote literary and
social criticism, and founded his own movie studio, the Sociéte des
Films Benavente. It produced to pictures, Pour toute la vie / Para toda la vida (1923) and Más allá de la muerte (1924), both directed by Benito Perojo. Benavente died in Madrid on July 14, 1954.
For further information: Rosinante to the Road Again by J. Don Passos (1922); Jacinto Benavente by Walter Starkie (1924); El teatro de Benavente, fin de siglo by José Vila Selma (1952); Jacinto Benavente y su teatro by Estevan Sánchez (1954); Vida y obra de Benavente by Angel Lázaro (1964); Jacinto Benavente by Marcelino C. Peñuelas (1969); Jacinto Benavente and His Theatre by José A. Diaz (1972); Benavente and the Spanish Panorama, 1894-1954 by Robert Louis Sheehan (1976); 'Benavente, Jacinto' by F.R.R. [Francisco Ruis-Ramón], in Columbia Dictionary of Modern European Literature, edited by Jean-Albert Bébé and William B. Edgerton (1980); 'Benavente y Martines, Jacinto,' Nobel Prize Winners: An H. W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, edited by Tyler Wasson (1987); Introduction by William-Alan Landes, in His Widow's Husband by Jacinto Benavente, translated by Sydney Landes and William-Alan Landes (2004); La dramaturgia de Jacinto Benavente by Enrique Gallud Jardiel (2015);
Hacia la renovación del teatro en los albores del siglo XX: Gente
conocida, La noche del sábado y Rosas de otoño, de Jacinto Benavente by Diana Muela Bermejo (2017)
Selected works:
- Comedia italiana (written before 1892)
- El criado de don Juan (written before 1892, prod. 1911)
- La senda del amor (written before 1892)
- La blancura de Pierrot (written before 1892)
- Cuento de primavera (written before 1892)
- Amor de artista (written before 1892)
- Modernismo (written before 1892)
- El encanto de una hora, 1892
- Teatro fantástico, 1892 [Fantastic Theater]
- Vilanos, 1893 [The Down of the Thistle]
- Versos, 1893 [Poetry]
- Cartas de mujeres, 1893 [Women's Letters]
- El nido ajeno, 1894 [Another's Nest]
- Gente conocida, 1896 [Eminent People]
- El marido de la Téllez, 1897 [Mrs.Téllez's husband]
- De alivio, 1897 (monologue)
- Don Juan, 1897 (based on Molière's play)
- La farándula, 1897 [The Company of Comedians]
- Figulinas, 1898
- La comida de las fieras, 1898 [The Wild Beasts' Banquet]
- Teatro feminista, 1898 (farce comedy with music)
- Cuento de amor, 1899 (based on Shakespeare's Twelfth Night)
- Operación quirúrgica, 1899
- Despedida cruel: comedia en un acto, 1899
- La gata de ángora, 1900
- Viaje de instrucción, 1900
- Por la herida, 1900
- Modas: sainete en un acto y en prosa, 1901
- La gobernadora, 1901
- The Governor's Wife (in Plays: Second Series, translated by J.G. Underhill, 1919)
- Sin querer, 1901
- Sacrificios, 1901
- Lo cursi, 1901
- La gobernadora, 1901
- El primo román, 1901
- Amor de amor, 1902
- ¡Liberdad!, 1902 (based on a play by Santiogo Rusiñol y Prats)
- En tren de los maridos, 1902
- Alma triunfante, 1902
- film: De mujer a mujer, 1950,
prod. Compañía Industrial Film Español S.A. (CIFESA),
dir. Luis Lucia, adaptation by Antonio Abad Ojuel
- El automóvil, 1902
- La noche del sábado: novela escénica en cinco cuadros. Lo cursi, comedia en tres actos, 1903
- Saturday Night (in Plays: Third Series, translated by John Garrett Underhill, 1923) - film
adaptations: La noche del sábado, 1950, prod. Suevia Films -
Cesáreo González, dir. Rafael Gil, screenplay Antonio Abad Ojuel and
Rafael Gil; La noche del sábado, TV play 1970, starring Carmen
Bernardos, Jaime Blanch, Luis Dávila, Andrés Meiuto, Tina Sáinz - El hombrecito, 1903
- Los favoritos, 1903
- Mademoiselle de Belle-Isle, 1903 (translation, based on a play by Alexandre Dumas pére)
- Por que se ama, 1903
- Al natural, 1903
- La casa de la dicha, 1903
- No fumadores, 1904
- No Smoking (in Plays: Second
Series, translated by John Garrett Underhill, 1919; translated by John
Garrett Underhill, in Adventures in World Literature, edited by Rewey
Belle Inglis and William K. Stewart, 1936) - El dragón de fuego, 1904
- Richelieu, 1904 (translation, based on a play by Edward Bulwer-Lytton)
- Los malhechores de bien, 1905
- The Evil Doers of Good (in Plays, translated by John Garrett Underhill, 1917)
- Rosas de verano, 1905
- Rosas de otoño, 1905
- Autumnal Roses (in Plays: Second Series, tr. John GarrettUnderhill, 1919) -
film adaptations: Rosas de otoño, 1943, dir. Eduardo Morera, Juan de
Orduña, starring María Fernanda Ladrón de Guevara, Mariano Asquerino
and Marta Santaolalla; Rosas de otoño, TV play 1979, in Estudio 1, dir.
Manuel Aguado, starring Amparo Rivelles, Francisco Piquer and Ana María
Vidal
- Manon Lescaut, 1905
- El susto de la condesa, 1905
- Cuento inmoral, 1905
- La sobresalienta, 1905
- Las cigarras hormigas, 1905
- Buena boda, 1905 (based on Émile Augier's Un beau mariage)
- La princesa bebé, 1906
- Princess Bebé (in Plays: Second Series, translated by John Garrett Underhill, 1919)
- Más fuerte que el amor, 1906
- El amor asusta, 1907
- Los búhos: comedia en tres actos y en prosa, 1907
- Los intereses creados: comedia de Polichinelas en dos actos, tres cuadros y un prólogo, 1907
-
The Bonds of Interest (tr. John Garrett Underhill, 1921; in Plays,
translated by John Garrett Underhill, 1917; Stanley Appelbaum, 2004) -
film: Los intereses creados, 1919, prod. Cantabria Cines, dir. Jacinto
Benavente, Ricardo Puga, with Ricardo Puga, Raymonde de Bach and Teresa
Arroniz - Abuela y nieta, 1907
- La copa encantada, 1907
- La princesa sin corazón, 1907
- Todos somos unos, 1907
- La historia de Otelo, 1907
- Los ojos de los muertos, 1907
- Señora ama: comedía en tres actos, 1908
- A Lad (in Plays: Fourth Series, tr. John Garrett Underhill, 1924) -
film adaptations: Señora ama, 1955, prod. Diana Films, Unión Films,
dir. Julio Bracho, starring Dolores del Rio, José Suárez and María Luz
Galicia; Señora ama, TV film 1980, in Estudio 1
- La sonrisa de Gioconda, 1908
- The Smile of Mona Lisa (translated by J.A. Herman, 1915)
- La fuerza bruta, 1908
- Brute Force (translated by John Garrett Underhill, 1936) - film
adaptations: La forza bruta, 1941, prod. Lux Film, dir. Carlo Ludovico
Bragaglia, starring Juan de Landa, Rossano Brazzi and Germana Paolieri;
La fuerza bruta, TV play 1980, in Teatro breve, starring Jaime
Blanch, Rafael Castejón, Yolanda Farr, Antonio Iranzo, Marisa
Lahoz - El marido de su viuda, 1908
-
His Widow's Husband (in Plays, translated by John Garrett Underhill, 1917; The
Nobel Prize Treasury, translated by John Garrett Underhill, 1948; translated by
Sidney and William-Alan Landes; edited and introduction by William-Alan
Landes, 2006) - De pequeñas causas, 1908
- Hacia la verdad: escenas de la vida moderna, en tres cuadros, 1908
- Ganarse la vida, 1909
- El último minué, 1909
- La escuela de las princesa, 1909
- The School of Princesses (in Plays: Fourth Series, translated by John Garrett Underhill, 1924)
- El príncipe que todo lo aprendió en los libros: comedia en dos actos y siete caudros, 1909
- The Prince Who Learned Everything out of Books (in Plays: Third Series, translated by John Garrett Underhill, 1923)
- Por las nubes, 1909
- In the Clouds (in Plays: Third Series, tr. John Garrett Underhill, 1923)
- De cerca: comedia en un acto y en pros, 1909
- At Close Range (tr. John Garrett Underhill, 1936)
- ¡A ver qué hace un hombre!, 1909
- La señorita se aburre: comedia en un acto, basada en una poesía de Tennyson, 1909
- De sobremesa; crónicas, 1910-1916 (6 vols.)
- El nietecito, 1910
- Caridad, 1911
- El criado de Don Juan, 1911
- Don Juan's Servant (tr. 1957)
- La rosa de los sueños: comedia en dos actos en prosa, 1911
-
TV play: La rosa de los sueños, 1968, in Teatro de siempre, starring
Concha Cuetos, Fernando Delgado, Estanis González, Lola Herrera, Luisa
Sala - El rey lear, 1911 (translation, based on Shakespeare's King Lear)
- La malquerida, 1913
- The Passion Flower (in Twenty-five Modern Plays, 3d ed., tr. John Garrett Underhill, 1953) - Väärä
rakkaus (suom.) -
film adaptations: La malquerida, 1914, dir. Ricardo de Baños; Passion
Flower / Love or Hate, 1921, dir. Herbert Brenon, starring Norma
Talmadge, Courtenay Foote, Eulalie Jensen, Harrison Ford; La
malquerida, 1939, dir. José López Rubio; 1949, dir. Emilio Fernandez,
starring Dolores del Rio, Pedro Armendáriz, Columba Domínguez; La
malquerida, TV play 1963, dir. Pedro Amalio Lópwez; TV play 1977, dir.
Enrique Diosdado; La malquerida, TV play 2006, in Estudio 1, dir. Belén
Molinero, starring María Jesús Hoyos, Mercedes Sampietro and María
Elena Flores - El destino manda, 1914 (translation, based on Paul Hervieu's Le destin est maître)
- El collar de estrellas, 1915
- La verdad, 1915
- The Truth (in Plays: Third Series, tr. John Garrett Underhill, 1923)
- La propia estimación, 1915
- El Año germanófilo, 1916
- La ciudad alegre y confiada: comedia en tres cuadros y un prólogo, considerados como tres actos. 2. parte de
"Los intereses creados, 1916
-
TV play 1966, in Estudio 1, starring Tomás Blanco, Margarita Calahorra,
Nuria Carresi, José María Escuer, Claudia Gravy, Francisco Piquer,
Manuel Torremocha, Paco Valladares
- Campo de armiño: comedia en tres actos, 1916
- Field of Ermine (in Plays: Fourth Series, tr. John Garrett Underhill, 1924)
- La túnica amarilla, 1916 (translation, based on the play by George C. Hazelton and Harry Benrimo)
- El mal que nos hacen, 1917
- Plays, 1917-24 (4 vols.)
- Los cachorros: comedia en tres actos, en prosa, 1918
- La mefistófela, 1918
- La Inmaculada de los Dolores, 1918
- La ley de los hijos, 1918
- Por ser con todos leal, ser para todos traidor, 1919
- Plays: Second Series, 1919
- La vestal de Occidente, 1919
- El audad, 1919 (based on the novel by Benito Pérez Galdós)
- La honra de los hombres, 1919
- La Cenicienta, 1919
- Y va de cuento, 1919
- La fuerza bruta, 1919
- Una señora, 1920
- A Lady (in Plays: Fourth Series, tr. John Garrett Underhill, 1924)
- Una pobre mujer, 1920
- Más allá de la muerte, 1922
- Teatro, 1922 (35 vols.)
- Por que se quitó Juan de la bebida, 1922
- Plays: Third Series, 1923
- Plays: Fourth Series, 1924
- Lecciones de buen amor: comedia en tres actos, 1924
- film 1944, prod. Rey Soria, dir. Rafael Gil, starring Juan Calvo, Félix Fernández and Milagros Leal
- Un par de botas, 1924
- Alfilerazos, 1924
- La otra honra: comedia en tres actos, 1924
- La virtud sospechosa: comedia en tres actos, 1924
- Nadie sabe lo que quiere, o el bailarín y el trabajador, 1925
-
film: El bailarín y el trabajador, 1936, dir. Luis Marquina,
starring Roberto Rey, Ana María Custodio, Antoñita Colomé, José
Isbert, Irene Caba Alba, Antonio Riquelme
- ¡Si creerás tú que es por mi gusto!, 1925
- El suicidio de lucerito, 1925
- Los nuevos yernos, 1925
- La mariposa que voló sobre el mar: comedia en tres actos, 1926
- film 1948, prod. Obregón, dir. Antonio de Obregón, screenplay Eugene Deslaw and Antonio de Obregón
- La noche iluminada, 1927
- El hijo de Polichinela: comedia en un prólogo y tres actos , 1927
- A las puertas del cielo, 1927
- El demonio fue antes ángel: comedia en tres actos y en prosa, 1928
- Pepa doncel: comedia en tres actos y dos cuadros, 1928
-
film adaptations: Pepa Doncel, 1969, dir. Luis Lucia, starring Aurora
Bautista, Juan Luis Galiardo and Mercedes Vecino; Pepa Doncel, TV play
1981, in Teatro estudio, dir. Alfredo Castellón
- Para el cielo y los altares: drama en tres actos, divididos en trece cuadros, y un epílogo, y en prosa, 1928
- ¡No quiero, no quiero!; comedia en tres actos, 1928
-
film: No quiero, no quiero, 1940, prod. Sindicato de la Industria del
Espectáculo (SIE), dir. Francisco Elías, screenplay Francisco Elías and
Lope Martínez de Rivera
- Vidas cruzadas: cinedrama en dos partes, dividida la primera en diez cuadros, y la segunda en
tres y un epílogo, y en prosa, 1929
-
film: Vidas cruzadas, 1942, prod. Compañía Industrial Film Español S.A.
(CIFESA), UPCE, dir. Luis Marquina, starring Ana Mariscal, Enrique
Guitart and Luis Peña
- Los amigos del hombre, 1930
- Los andrajos de la púrpura: drama en cinco actos, 1930
- De muy buena familia: comedia en tres actos y en prosa, 1931
- Literatura: comedia en tres actos, 1931
- La melodía del jazz-band: comedia en un prólogo y tres actos, 1931
- Cuando los hijos de Eva no son los hijos de Adán: comedia en
tres actos, 1931 (based on Margaret Kennedy's novel The Constant Nymph)
- La moral del divorcio: conferencia dialogada, dividida en tres partes, 1932
- Santa Rusia: primera parte de una trilogía, 1932
- La duquesa gitana: comedia de magia en cinco actos divididos en diez cuadros, 1932
- Le verdad inventada: comedia en tres actos, 1933
- El rival de su mujer: comedia en tres actos y en prosa, 1933
- La novia de nieve: comedia en un prólogo y tres actos, 1934
- El pan comido en la mano: comedia en tres actos, 1934
- Ni al amor ni al mar: drama en cuatro actos y un epílogo, 1934
- Memorias de un madrileño: puestas en acción en cinco cuadros, 1934
- "No juguéis con esas cosas"; comedia en tres actos y en prosa, 1935
- Cualquiera lo sabe: comedia en tres actos y en prosa, 1935
- Teatro de Jacinto Benavente, 1937 (introduction by Gregorio Martínez Sierra)
- Obras completas, 1940-58 (11 vols.)
- Lo increíble, 1940
- Aves y pájaros, 1940
- Abuelo y nieto, 1941
- Y amargaba, 1941
- La última carta, 1941
- La honradez de la cerradura, 1942
- The Secret of the Keyhole (tr. 1957) -
film adaptations: La honradez de la cerradura, 1950, prod. PECSA Films,
dir. Luis Escobar; La honradez de la cerradura, TV play 1964, in
Primera fila, dir. Gustavo Pérez Puig
- La culpa es tuya, 1942
- Al fin, mujer, 1942
- ¡Hija del alma!, 1942
- La enlutada, 1943
- El demonio del teatro, 1943
- Don margin él de las magias, 1944
- Los niños perdidos en la selva, 1944
- Espejo de grandes, 1944
- Nieve en mayo, 1945
- La infanzona, 1945
- La ciudad doliente, 1945
- Titania, 1945
- Obras completas, 1942-46 (11 vols.)
- Al servicio de su majestad imperial, 1947
- La infanzona, 1948
- Abdicación, 1948
- Divorcio de almas, 1948
- Adoración, 1948
- Al amor hay que mandarlo al colegio, 1950
- Su amante esposaA, 1950
- Tú una vez y el diablo diez, 1950
- Mater imperatrix, 1950
- La vida en verso, 1951
- Ha llegado Don Juan, 1952
- El lebrel del cielo, 1953
- El alfiler en la boca, 1953
- Servir, 1953
- Almas prisioneras, 1953
- Caperucita asusta al lobo, 1953
- Hijos padres de sus padres, 1954
- El marido de bronce, 1954
- Por salvar su amor, 1954
- El teatro de Benavente en el siglo, 1954
- El bufón de Hamlet, 1958
- Jacinto Benavente: antología, 1966 (edited by Juan Emilio Aragones)
- El príncipe que todo lo aprendió en los libros, 1970
- Los intereses creados, 1974 (edited by Fernando Lázaro
Carreter)
- Four Plays, 1978 (in English versions with an introd. by John Garrett Underhill ; and a critical
essay by Jacinto Benavente)
- Comedias escogidas, 1978 (foreword by Arturo Berenguer Carimoso)
- Obras completas, con una nota preliminar, 1958 (11 vols.)
- La noche del sábado: novela escénica en cinco cuadros, 1991
- Teatro fantástico; La sonrisa de Gioconda, 2001 (eds.
Javier Huerta Calvo, Emilio Peral Vega)
- Comedias y dramas, 2007- (eds. Luis Tomás González del
Valle and José Manuel Pereiro Otero)
- Los intereses creados: 1907-2007, 2008 (foreword by Santiago Fisas Ayxelá, ed. Antonio Castro Jiménez, Javier Domingo)
- El príncipe que todo lo aprendió en los libros, 2016 (ilustraciones de Zuzanna Celej)
Some rights reserved Petri Liukkonen (author) & Ari Pesonen. 2008-2023.
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