At first the writing of plays seems to have been a pastime for this mathematician and politician. _The Wife of the Avenger_, _At the Hilt of the Sword_, and _The Gladiator of Ravenna_, which appeared between 1874 and 1876, were popular in Spain but are little known by English translation. In 1877 he wrote a drama that has been much discussed, since it was translated as _Madman or Saint_ by Ruth Lansing (Poet Lore, Boston, 1912); another translation by Hannah Lynch (Boston, 1895) bore the title, _Folly or Saintliness_. Still another translation by Mary Serrano is used in _Library of the World’s Best Literature_. It is a strong play emotionally, with that touch of idealism and romance which were traits of the author, blended with his keen analysis. Don Lorenzo, a wealthy man of Madrid, finds that he has been deceived regarding his parentage; he is not the son of a rich mother of noble family, as he and the world supposed, but the child of his nurse, Juana, who dies after she tells him the tale. No longer young, with his daughter engaged to a son of the Duchess of Almonte, he is determined to tell the truth and so defy his family. A specialist in mental disease is called with the physician to examine him; at the same time he sends for a notary to record his renunciation of his name and estate. His final monologue is dramatic, beginning with the lines: “What! is a man to be declared mad because he is resolved to do his duty. It cannot be! Humanity is neither so blind nor so bad as that!” These earlier plays by Echegaray, which called forth such ardent praise from his countrymen, who would rank him with Calderon and Lope de Vega of the past centuries, are trivial in literary value beside two of later years, _The Great Galeoto_ and _The Son of Don Juan_. Eleven years separated these two strong dramas (1881-1892) during which the author continued to write plays, some with historical setting like _Harold the Norman_ and _Lysander the Bandit_; others were of romantic type, some tragedies and more comedies. In general, he sought to revive romantic drama, to proclaim the sharp conflicts in life between passion and duty. His motives were often more pronounced than his characterization; his men and women were sometimes mere mechanisms, fighting their battles for honor and truth. There was a chivalrous note in his lines where domestic fidelity formed the keynote of the emotional struggle. Soliloquy was much used by this dramatist.