Background
He was born in Valladolid, León, Spain on February 21, 1817.
(Don Juan Tenorio, el drama romantico por excelencia, es u...)
Don Juan Tenorio, el drama romantico por excelencia, es una de las pocas obras que han tenido y siguen teniendo una vida autentica mente popular. Dificil seria encontrar un espanol que no sepa recitar de memoria alguno de sus versos. El drama, que repite el viejo tema de Don Juan, ha adquirido una eficacia literaria inusitada en la mezcla de temas de capa y espada con los religiosos y morales. Esta edicion se basa en la francesa que Zorrilla dio como definitiva cotejada con el manuscrito autografo conservado en la Real Academia Espanola.
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He was born in Valladolid, León, Spain on February 21, 1817.
He received his secondary education in Madrid, studied law briefly at the universities of Toledo and Valladolid.
He returned to Valladolid to follow a literary career. Here he fell into great poverty, but an elegy read at the funeral of Mariano Jose de Larra in 1837 made him famous overnight. He went to France in 1850 and five years later to Mexico, where he became the protege of the Emperor Maximilian. On his return to Spain in 1866 he again became impoverished and had a difficult time until 1883. The Cortes finally gave him a pension and in 1889 he was made poet laureate of Spain.
He almost always found his inspiration in the national tradition, as Lope de Vega had done before him in the seventeenth century. In his narrative "Legends, " Zorrilla shows outstanding ability; among the best are A buen juez mejor testigo (1838) ("For a Good Judge, a Better Witness"), and El Capitán Montoya, both possessing great dramatic facility. But the plays Don Juan Tenorio (1844) and Traidor, inconfeso y mártir (1849), both on traditional Spanish themes, are his most important works. Don Juan continues to possess an extraordinary appeal for the Hispanic world. In most cities of Spain and Latin America it is played every year on All Saints' Day. Zorrilla's Don Juan is a much more vital character than most other derivations from Tirso de Molina's original; technically Traidor, inconfeso y mártir is a better play, but it lacks characters of equal vitality. These two plays have established Zorrilla as one of the best nationalistic playwrights of nineteenth century Spanish literature.
(Don Juan Tenorio, el drama romantico por excelencia, es u...)
(Book by Zorrilla, Jose)
His marriage in 1839 to a widow was extremely unhappy.