When _The Son of Don Juan_ and _Mariana_ were translated, and linked in the memory of English readers with _The Great Galeoto_, world-critics gave study to this forceful Spanish dramatist who had grown in favor during the decade from 1890 to 1900. Two characteristics of _The Great Galeoto_ were noted: the fearless, vigorous portrayal of the evil of gossip and resultant tragedy; the fact that the chief personage in the play exercised occult influence and did not appear on the stage. He is the “busybody,” who creates all the troublesome situations, who directs the characters (or suggests their words) but he is not present. Elizabeth Wallace, in an article of value in the _Atlantic Monthly_, September, 1908, on “The Spanish Drama of Today,” says: “This vanishing hero is the cruel, careless world, hastening eagerly to cast the first stone, and, so soon tired of the sport, hurrying on to find some new excitement, leaving death and destruction in its wake.”[149] This culprit is the city of Madrid (or society anywhere). There are individualized characters like Theodora and Don Julian; Don Severo, the plotter, may well be compared to Iago. Even more virile than this romantic tragedy is _The Son of Don Juan_; it suggests Ibsen’s _Ghosts_, both in germ-idea and _dénouement_, although it has distinctive merit. Echegaray borrowed the words of the Norwegian dramatist for the lines of Lazarus, “Mother, give me the sun!” In the Prologue the Spanish author expands these symbolic words to “enfold a world of ideas, an ocean of sentiments, a hell of sorrows, a cruel lesson, a supreme warning to society and to the family circle.” Society is, again, at the bar of justice, as in _The Great Galeoto_; the offense this time is lax morality of parent, and the lunacy which falls, in retribution, on the child. The mother of Lazarus is a convincing character. In _Mariana_ are found some of the strongest delineations in Echegaray’s dramas, notably Clara, wife of Don Castulo, the grotesque archeologist, and Mariana, the widow, with riches in America, described by Clara (in a touch of jealousy, yet appreciation) as “a widow who is hardly a widow and is almost a child.” The latter woman is capricious, disdainful, yet passionate in her relations with her lover, Daniel. Melodrama enters somewhat into the closing scenes of intrigue and excitement. James Graham has translated both _Mariana_ and _The Son of Don Juan_.