The  Bonds of Interest is thought to be Jacinto Benavente’s most important play because it bridged the gap between the 19^th Century Spanish melodramas, playful French inspired commercial forms of musical theatre, patriotic nationalism  and uncritical visions of Spanish Society by rejecting the bourgeois  festive theatre that hid Spain’s real problems of that period.  (See the Cambridge companion to Modern Spanish Culture) Towards the end of the Century, the war had drained Spain and left its Spanish American colonies,  Cuba and Puerto Rico in ruins.  Benavente’s play operates against a background of this devastation by transforming Spanish traditions of the stage, especially the Siglo de Oro and the Italian partially inspired by commedia classical theatre,  into a viciously critical form of theatre  that made nasty fun of the rich, that exposed the plight of the poor, that taunted the false values of those with money. …

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