above Echegaray, but the most astute among them have been baffled in making any complete analysis of his philosophy. This is due partly to his attitude towards his work and partly to his astonishing versatility. Like Shaw he is himself a brilliant critic and he delights in his essays and prefaces to astonish and confuse the other critics with startling phrase and paradox. At the close of his Introduction to the Second Series of Benavente's plays, which has just been published, Mr. Underhill appends some of the Spaniard's critical maxims, the Shavian flavour of which is very keen. "Prince Hamlet, although the prototype of doubt, like all sceptics had faith in what was most preposterous: the probability that a theatrical performance would disclose anything." "One-fourth of the morality, rectitude, and sense of justice which an audience brings into the theatre would, if left outside, make the world over into paradise." Another often quoted saying of his is: "I do not make my plays for the public; I make a public for my plays." Again, he once said to a friend, speaking of one of his delightful fairy fantasies, "There is no inner meaning to the play, except the very obvious outer meaning which nobody understands." Such statements are just as disconcerting to serious-minded critics in Spain as in England or America.
Nevertheless, in the very midst of his most perverse epigrams he consistently reveals an honest disgust with all shams and poses and a very firm belief in democracy. As an author, his prodigious industry is the very antithesis of the dilettante airs and graces that some of his contemporaries assume, and he mocks to scorn the self-styled genius and his talks of moods and inspirations. As a literary critic, his bête noire is the parlour drama whose failure on the stage is explained away by saying that it is too intellectual or too artistic for the populace. As an interpreter of life, in his own plays he holds fast to this same hatred of all forms of hypocrisy and this same faith in the ultimate good judgement of the people. In The Evil Doers of Good, his clever satire of organized charity, his mouthpiece, Don Heliodoro, exclaims passionately:
"You are not handing out alms for nothing. All that you demand in return is a profession of faith, an oath of absolute allegiance, social, religious, political, sentimental —yes, even sentimental. You are shocked when you find someone who is not willing to sell his soul, his most cherished beliefs, for whatever you are willing to give
