Personal information

Surname: Quiñones de Benavente
First name: Luis
Born: ?1581, Toledo, Spain
Died: 1651

Biography

Luis Quiñones de Benavente was born in Toledo in either 1581 (Thacker and Durán) or 1593 (Bergman and Constable). He was ordained a priest in Toledo before moving to Madrid. There he wrote for the court and made friends with the shining artistic lights of the time; his circle included Tirso de Molina, who mentioned Benavente’s work in his Cigarrales de Toledo and who praised him highly in his play Tanto es lo demás como lo de menos. He was mentioned by Lope de Vega in his Laurel de Apolo of 1630. Early in his career Benavente participated in the ‘justas poéticas’ popular in his day- poetic contests held for feast days and celebrations - but he did not enter every contest or keep a high profile like many of his contemporaries. He is known as one of the best writers of short comic interludes (entremeses) of the Spanish Golden Age. Before he turned his hand to short plays, he made a name for himself as a composer of bailes (dance pieces) to accompany other writers’ interludes. Only 150 short plays survive that are linked with Benavente, but many of these cannot authoritatively be shown to be by him. His short dramas played between the acts of the most popular dramas of the seventeenth century. His works are collected in the Jocosería of 1645, notable for being the first collection of interludes in Spanish by a single author. He stopped writing plays in the 1640s when his health failed, and he died in 1651.

Themes

Benavente wrote short plays on as many themes as there are comic situations. He poked fun at all walks of life, especially people aspiring to be higher up in social or authoritative structures, such as those faking a title of nobility or wielding local council power as if it were courtly authority. He frequently uses theatre-within-theatre as a means of contact with his audience. Benavente’s favourite themes were popular with his audiences, and he often wrote about love, social mobility and the art of poetry.  He employs existing forms; a typical example is a church sexton wooing a lady who tries to impress her by winning a poetry competition.  He also imitates writers like Quevedo; for example in one play he satirises the convention of using excessive clichés when speaking. Many of Benavente’s plays depict women playing tricks on men, or the inversion of the sexes.  Faking one’s own death as a means to an end is also a favourite theme. Some of his plays were written specifically for the actor Cosme Pérez who gained his reputation by playing the character Juan Rana who appeared in a variety of different plays.  Juan Rana’s thinly-veiled homosexuality had great appeal for the audiences of the time. Thacker writes that Benavente was above all an entertainer, not a moralist, although many of his plays do have satirical themes aimed at mocking a wide range of behaviours within society.  See Madroñal Durán (2003) and Thacker (2007).

• Madroñal Durán, Abraham. 2003. ‘Quiñones de Benavente y el teatro breve’. Historia del teatro español I, ed. Javier Huerta Calvo, pp. 1025-68. Madrid, Gredos. (in Spanish)

• Thacker, Jonathan. 2007. ‘Types of Comedia and Other Forms of Theatre’. A Companion to Golden Age Theatre, pp. 143-69. Woodbridge, Tamesis

Style

As Benavente focused his career on short comic plays and dance pieces, writing no full-length plays, he was able to develop a very well-established and polished style. It was unusual at the time to focus on the short forms of playwriting alone, as most dramatists would have included at least a few full-length plays in their repertoire. Benavente always writes in verse and has a distinct penchant for puns and word-play; this makes his work a challenge for the translator but provides many opportunities for playing linguistic games.  His characters are drawn from stock types popular in the age, many of whom are in turn derived from oral tradition and folklore. His work is replete with music and dance, creating a festive atmosphere of carnival and celebration. Benavente is expert at stagecraft, evidenced by his masterful use of slapstick comedy and employment of visual humour (such as the cape gag in La capeadora). Frequently manipulating established traditions, he is also known as an innovator; many of his plays end in a song and dance rather than in fisticuffs, as was the norm. He had an eye for what we would now call choreography, and a gift for wordplay, engendering a hybrid style of physical and verbal theatre that was immensely popular with his audiences.

Plays in the database

• La capeadora (1640-1645) / The Cape Thief

Useful reading and websites

• Bergman, Hannah E. 1972. Luis Quiñones de Benavente. New York, Twayne

  For La capeadora see pp. 102-5

• Madroñal Durán, Abraham. 2003. ‘Quiñones de Benavente y el teatro breve’. Historia del teatro español I, ed. Javier Huerta Calvo, pp. 1025-68. Madrid, Gredos. (in Spanish)

• Thacker, Jonathan. 2007. ‘Types of Comedia and Other Forms of Theatre’. A Companion to Golden Age Theatre, pp. 143-69. Woodbridge, Tamesis

Entry written by Kathleen Jeffs. Last updated on 23 September 2010.

Post a comment

You must be logged in to post a comment. Please log in or sign up for a free account.