Benavente Y Martínez, Jacinto

(häthēn´tō bā´´nävān´tā ē märtē´nĕth), 1866–1954, Spanish dramatist, b. Madrid. He was awarded the 1922 Nobel Prize in Literature. His best-known play is Los intereses creados (1907, tr. Bonds of Interest, 1917), a farce written on the pattern of the Italian commedia dell'arte. In 1916 he wrote a second part to this play, La ciudad alegre y confiada [the gay and confident city]. La malquerida (1913, tr. The Passion Flower, 1920), on the Phaedra theme, was popular with the public and the critics. His plays fall into four classes: social satires, psychological dramas, children's plays, and allegorical-morality plays. He was at his best in sparkling satires of aristocratic and upper middle-class life.

See study by M. Peñuelas (tr. 1969).