Jacinto Benavente

The text of this play was translated into English by John Garrett Underhill, the foremost American scholar in the unfamiliar field of current Spanish literature and the official representative in this country of the Society of Spanish Authors.

Mr. Underhill is a personal friend of Jacinto Benavente, and his rendering of the text must be accepted as authoritative.

Most of our American plays seem pale and bloodless when compared with such pieces as La Marguerita, a more emphatic composition by Jacinto Benavente, which also was translated by John Garrett Underhill and was presented under the altered title of The Passion Flower.

A young woman, Acacia, is about to be married to a young man, Faustino.

On the eve of the wedding, Faustino is shot and kills from ambush.

One historian counted 65 cafes within a kilometer of the Puerta del Sol, right in the center, between 1868 and 1902.

The playwright Jacinto Benavente held court at the Gato Negro.

The Ateneo had its famous tertulia nicknamed La Cacherrería.

And the writer of Valle Inclán presided at the Nuevo Café de Levante, about which he made one of the great claims in tertulia history, that the café had exerted more influence on contemporary literature and art than two or three universities and academies combined.