José Zorrilla

José Zorrilla
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Born	February 21, 1817 Valladolid (Spain)
Died	January 23, 1893 (aged 75) Madrid (Spain)
Resting place	Cemetery of San Justo (until 1896) Cemetery of El Carmen (since 1896)
Occupation	Writer
Movement	Romanticism
Signature

José Zorrilla y Moral (Valladolid, February 21, 1817 – Madrid, January 23, 1893) was a Spanish poet and dramatist, author of the Romantic drama Don Juan Tenorio.

Biography

A native of Valladolid, he was the son of José Zorrilla Caballero, a man described as old-fashioned and of absolutist ideology, a follower of the pretender Carlos María Isidro de Borbón and court reporter (relator) of the Royal Chancery. His mother, Nicomedes Moral, was a very pious woman.

After several years in Valladolid, the family passed through Burgos (where the father was appointed Governor) and Seville before finally settling, when the boy was nine years old (1827), in Madrid, where the father worked with great zeal as Alcalde de Casa y Corte and superintendent of police under the orders of Francisco Tadeo Calomarde.

In Madrid the younger José Zorrilla entered the Seminary of Nobles, run by the Jesuits; there he took part in school theatrical performances and learned Italian well:

At that school I began to acquire the bad habit of neglecting the essential in order to attend to the accessory and, negligent in the serious studies of philosophy and the exact sciences, I applied myself to drawing, fencing and belles-lettres, secretly reading Walter Scott, Fenimore Cooper and Chateaubriand and committing, in short, at the age of twelve, my first offense of writing verses. The Jesuits praised them and encouraged my inclination; I took to reciting them in imitation of the actors I saw at the theater, whenever I went to the Príncipe, which was then presided over by the Alcaldes de Casa y Corte, whose gown my father wore; I became famous at the examinations and public events of the Seminary, and came to play the leading man in the theater where these were held and where some comedies of the old theater, recast by the Jesuits, were performed; in them, out of regard for morality, the lovers were turned into brothers and sisters, and this system produced a moral gibberish that made the mischievous Ferdinand VII smile and his brother the Infante Don Carlos frown, both of whom sometimes attended our Christmas performances. Don Carlos sent his sons to our classrooms and to fulfill their church duties in our chapel, to which His Holiness Gregory XVI had sent his blessing and the wax bodies of two young martyr saints, beheaded in Rome, [...] whose beheaded figures frightened me so much that I never once passed at night in front of the chapel on whose side altars they lay.

— 

After the death of Ferdinand VII, the father, a furious absolutist, was banished to Lerma, and the son was sent to study law at the Royal University of Toledo under the supervision of a relative who was a canon and in whose house he lodged. However, the son was distracted by other occupations: he "amused himself by visiting the antiquities... quarreled with the canon for not coming to dinner at twelve, for not wearing the long gowns, for letting his hair grow long and for writing songs". The Canon sent him back to Valladolid to continue his studies there (1833–1836). When the unruly son arrived, he was admonished by his father, who afterward left for his native town, Torquemada, and by Manuel Joaquín Tarancón y Morón, rector of the University and future Bishop of Córdoba.

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Portrayed by Federico Madrazo

The imposed nature of his studies and his attraction to drawing, to women (a cousin with whom he fell in love during a vacation) and to the literature of authors such as those already mentioned (for example, Chateaubriand's The Genius of Christianity fell into his hands) as well as Alexandre Dumas, Victor Hugo, the Duke of Rivas and Espronceda, whom he found and read in the house of Pedro de Madrazo y Kuntz, a friend who studied law with him and felt the same attraction to art, ruined his future as a pettifogger.

Around that time he discovered that he was a sleepwalker: at times he would go to bed leaving a poem unfinished and get up to find it completed, or go to bed bearded and wake up shaved; he therefore asked to be locked in to sleep.

His father gave up on getting anything out of his son and ordered him taken to Lerma to dig in the vineyards; but when he was halfway there the son stole a mare from a cousin, fled to Madrid (1836) and began his literary career, frequenting the artistic and bohemian circles of Madrid together with his kindred spirit Miguel de los Santos Álvarez, and going very hungry.

He passed himself off as an Italian artist in order to draw for the Museo de las Familias, published some poems in El Artista and delivered revolutionary speeches at the Café Nuevo, so that he ended up being pursued by the police. He took refuge in the house of a Gypsy. Around that time he became friends with the Italian baritone Joaquín Massard and, upon the death of Larra in 1837, at Massard's urging, José Zorrilla composed and recited in his memory a poem that would earn him the deep friendship of José de Espronceda, Antonio García Gutiérrez and Juan Eugenio Hartzenbusch and would ultimately establish him as a renowned poet; to it belong these lines:

For the poet, in his mission / upon the earth where he dwells, / is a cursed plant / bearing fruits of blessing

He then began to write for the newspapers El Español, where he replaced the deceased, and El Porvenir, where he came to earn a salary of six hundred reales; he began to frequent the gathering of El Parnasillo and read poems at El Liceo; he was also an editor of El Entreacto, a publication of theater criticism. In 1837 his first book appeared, Poesías, with a prologue by Nicomedes Pastor Díaz; his first drama, written in collaboration with García Gutiérrez, was Juan Dándolo, premiered in July 1839 at the Teatro del Príncipe.

In 1840 he published his extremely famous Cantos del trovador and premiered three dramas, Más vale llegar a tiempo, Vivir loco y morir más and Cada cual con su razón. In 1842 his Vigilias de Estío appeared and he presented his plays El zapatero y el rey (first and second parts), El eco del torrente and Los dos virreyes.

From 1840 to 1845, Zorrilla was under exclusive contract to Juan Lombía, impresario of the Teatro de la Cruz, where during those five seasons he premiered no fewer than twenty-two dramas. And he was so well regarded that at the end of 1843 he received from the Government of Spain the supernumerary cross of the Royal and Distinguished Order of Charles III, together with fellow dramatists Manuel Bretón de los Herreros and Juan Eugenio Hartzenbusch.

In 1838 he had married Florentina Matilde O'Reilly, a ruined Irish widow sixteen years his senior and with a son by her previous husband José Bernal, but the marriage was unhappy; a daughter they had died a year after her birth, and he had several mistresses; Doña Florentina was overcome by pathological jealousy and ended up turning the poet against his family, made him abandon the theater and, finally, after the dazzling success of Don Juan Tenorio in 1844, conceived in a sleepless night and written in twenty-one days, made him leave her in 1845 and emigrate to France and later to Mexico (1855), where his wife's furious letters and defamatory anonymous notes still reached him.

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Los poetas contemporáneos. Una lectura de Zorrilla en el estudio del pintor by Antonio María Esquivel (1846). Museo del Prado, Madrid.

He had to return to Madrid when his mother died in 1846; back in Paris, he had the Casa Baudry print two volumes of Obras de D,. José Zorrilla (I, Obras poéticas. II, Obras dramáticas) with a biography by Ildefonso Ovejas; there he maintained friendships with Alexandre Dumas, Alfred de Musset, Victor Hugo, Théophile Gautier and George Sand. Since he had sold the rights to the Tenorio for a pittance, he could not collect royalties for its many revivals, and his efforts to recover them were in vain. In 1849 he received several honors: he was made a member of the board of the newly founded Teatro Español; the Liceo organized a session to extol him publicly, and the Royal Academy admitted him as a member, although he only took possession of seat L at a date as distant as May 31, 1885, with the speech in verse Autobiografía y autorretrato poéticos. But his father died that same year, and this was a hard blow to him, because his father refused to forgive him, leaving a great weight on the son's conscience (and considerable debts), which affected his work. El puñal del godo and Traidor, inconfeso y mártir were great successes, some more so in their revivals than in their premieres.

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Portrait of Zorrilla

Fleeing his wife once again, he returned to Paris in 1850, where his sorrows were sweetened by his mistress Leila, to whom he gave himself passionately and about whom very little is known; there he wrote the two volumes of his poem Granada. In 1852 the Baudry house printed a third volume of Obras poéticas y dramáticas. He traveled to London in 1853, where he was accompanied by his inseparable financial troubles, from which he was rescued by the famous watchmaker Losada; around that time he composed his famous Serenata morisca in honor of Eugénie de Montijo, who that same year had married the Emperor Napoleon III; he was going to be awarded the Legion of Honour, but once again some letters from his furious wife ruined it.

He then went to Mexico, where he would spend eleven years of his life. He arrived in Veracruz on January 9, 1855, and was received with enthusiasm (even though some false quintillas against the country had been circulated under his name), first by the liberal government (1854–1866), spending long periods in the Valley of Apan, where he lived a new love affair with a woman named Paz, and later under the protection and patronage of the Emperor Maximilian I, with an interruption in 1858, a year he spent in Cuba. There he began to suffer attacks of epilepsy that would stay with him for the rest of his life.

One day, as I sat down at the table, the house spun around me and the ground gave way beneath my feet; a great noise, like distant music and the ringing of bells, resounded deafeningly in my brain, and I lost consciousness. Isidoro, alarmed, picked me up and immediately called his doctor; they made me lie down; I felt nausea, dizziness and drowsiness. I remained thus for forty-eight hours... On the third day the doctor found me working at seven in the morning; they concluded that the vomiting sickness had passed, and congratulated themselves on it. Woe is me! It was the first sign of an epileptic affliction that I combat today with doses of bromide that frighten the pharmacist to whom I first present the prescription of Dr. Cortezo, to whom, because of it, I probably owe my life.

— 

In Cuba he tried his luck in the slave trade. He formed a partnership with the Spanish bookseller and journalist Cipriano de las Cagigas, son of a well-known slave trader, to import Indians taken prisoner in the war against the Maya of Yucatán (Mexico) and sell them to the Cuban sugar plantations. Zorrilla bought a batch of Indians in Campeche, but the death of Cagigas from black vomit (yellow fever) put an end to the business, and Zorrilla returned to Mexico in March 1859. In that country he led a life of isolation and poverty, without getting involved in the civil war between federalists and unitarians. However, when Maximilian I took power as Emperor of Mexico (1864), Zorrilla became court poet and was appointed director of the now-defunct National Theater.

When his wife Florentina O'Reilly died of cholera in October 1865, Zorrilla at last found himself free to return to Spain; he set sail in 1866 and passed through Havana, Saint-Nazaire, Paris, Lyon, Avignon, Nîmes and Perpignan, and finally on July 19 he arrived in Barcelona. He went to Valladolid on September 21 to settle his affairs, received many people at his house, went to the bullfights, gave two readings at the Teatro Calderón and, at the Teatro Lope de Vega, his drama Sancho García was performed. The newspapers were bursting with news about the poet, regarded as a national glory. The poet Carolina Coronado bore witness to this:

Zorrilla, what has happened? / What do you have to tell us? / What went on? What did you hear? / Where were you hidden away? / Why did you take so long to come?

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On October 14 he left for Madrid, where he remained for a few months overseeing the publication of his Álbum de un loco; in March 1867 he traveled again in search of his "beloved places," wrote the critic Narciso Alonso Cortés: Torquemada (Palencia), where his parents were buried; and then Quintanilla Somuñó, his mother's homeland in the province of Burgos and that of "cousin Gumis," his first love. There he was brought a letter that his friend the Emperor Maximilian I sent him from Mexico, dissuading him from returning to his side: "Abdication is going to become necessary; avoid a useless journey and await orders." Just one month later, on June 19 of that year 1867, Maximilian would be executed by firing squad in Querétaro. He then poured into a poem all his hatred against the Mexican liberals, as well as against those who had abandoned his friend: Napoleon III and the Pope. This work is El drama del alma. From then on his religious faith suffered a hard blow.

He recovered by marrying again, to Juana Pacheco Martín, on August 20, 1869, in Barcelona; she was twenty years old, he fifty-two. Zorrilla was a spendthrift and never knew how to manage his finances: the money troubles returned, and neither the public recitals of his work, nor a government commission in Rome, where he stayed with his wife between 1871 and 1873, nor a pension granted too late managed to get him out of them, although he received the protection of some figures of Spanish high society such as the Counts of Guaqui. Honors, however, rained down on him: King Amadeo I granted him the Grand Cross of Charles III; he was appointed chronicler of Valladolid (1884), and he was crowned with laurel as national poet in Granada in 1889, etc. Tired of his research for the Spanish government in Rome, at the beginning of 1874 he decided to move to France, where, in the region of Les Landes, he set up house and devoted himself, together with his wife, to floriculture; they spent two years there until in December 1876 Zorrilla and his wife were forced to return to Spain, and he went back to work giving public readings of his works. Eduardo Gasset, publisher of El Imparcial, offered to print his memoirs in installments, Recuerdos del tiempo viejo, in its Monday supplement; and from October 6, 1879, they began to appear. He spent the years 1880, '81 and '82 traveling and giving readings throughout Spain, waiting for a promised government pension that never came.

In 1883 he embarked on another exhausting tour: he was sixty-six years old, and he wrote: "I do not have an hour to rest; hoarse, tired and short of sleep, I go about like an old crow." He inaugurated the theater that bears his name in Valladolid in 1884. He settled there again until April 1889, but always touring.

Funeral procession passing along the Calle de la Montera in Madrid (La Ilustración Española y Americana, January 30, 1893)

In a letter to his great friend, the poet José Velarde, and speaking of himself in the third person, he set out his sad situation:

Zorrilla produced two or three literary commodities which, under the titles Zapatero y el rey, Sancho García and Don Juan Tenorio, went into circulation capitalized at ten to twelve thousand reales each; Zorrilla produced these literary commodities before the enactment of the law on theatrical property, that is, before 1847, and sold them as such things were sold at the time, and each of them has legally produced for its buyers 30, 40 and 50 thousand duros. Now, since the law has no retroactive effect, since it does not grant works of the intellect the remedy of enormous lesion, Zorrilla supports, in the first half of November, with Don Juan Tenorio, all the actors and impresarios of Spain and America, and he is exposed, should he by God's curse reach decrepitude, to dying in the hospital or in the madhouse, or to begging for alms on those very days when with his work he supports so many. And his friends say "to the lawmakers": "Since the law cannot protect Zorrilla by obliging those who legally bought his works to share their enormous profits with him, do not let him who with such works created these fortunes and supports so many enterprises die of hunger in his old age" (J. Zorrilla, Letter to José Velarde, 19-XII-1881)

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Zorrilla lying in state in the assembly hall of the Royal Spanish Academy.

On February 14, 1890, he underwent surgery in Madrid to remove a brain tumor; Queen Maria Christina then hastened to grant him the pension two months later; but the tumor returned and he died in Madrid in 1893 during another operation. His remains were buried in the San Justo cemetery in Madrid, but in 1896, in fulfillment of the poet's wishes, they were moved to Valladolid. Today they lie in the Pantheon of Illustrious Vallisoletanos in the cemetery of El Carmen.

In 1982 the stadium of Real Valladolid C.F., which bears his name, was inaugurated in his native city.

The literature of José Zorrilla

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Monument to José Zorrilla in Valladolid

He cultivated all the genres in verse: lyric, epic or narrative, and dramatic. There are three elements in Zorrilla's life of great interest for understanding the orientation of his work.

First, his relationship with his father. A despotic and severe man, he systematically rejected his son's affection, refusing to forgive him his youthful errors. The writer carried with him a kind of guilt complex, and to overcome it he decided to defend in his creative work a traditionalist ideal very much in keeping with his father's views, but in contradiction with his own innermost progressive ideas. He says in Recuerdos del tiempo viejo: "My father had not esteemed my verses at all: nor my conduct, the key to which he alone held."

Second, his sensual temperament must be highlighted, which drew him toward women: two wives, an early love with a cousin and various love affairs in Paris and Mexico make up a list that, although very far from that of Don Juan, points in the same direction. Love is one of the fundamental axes of all of Zorrilla's output.

It is not idle to ask, as a third conditioning factor, about Zorrilla's health. At a certain point in his life, indeed, he invented a double, a madman (Cuentos de un loco, 1853), who appears almost obsessively thereafter. In Recuerdos del tiempo viejo, his autobiography, he speaks of his fondness for the Tarot, his hallucinations, sleepwalking and epilepsy. When did the brain tumor appear and how did it affect his behavior? Perhaps the predominant role of fantasy in the writer and his enormous sense of mystery may find an explanation along these lines.

Of his character, his biographer Narciso Alonso Cortés said that he was as naive as a child, kind-hearted and a friend to all, ignorant of the value of money and a stranger to politics. His independence, of which he was very proud, should also be emphasized. In verses reminiscent of those of Antonio Machado, he confessed that he owed everything to his work, and he went so far as to turn down lucrative public posts because he did not feel qualified; in his Recuerdos del tiempo viejo, he stated: "I fear that our revolution is going to be fruitless for Spain because all of us Spaniards believe ourselves good and fit for everything and we all meddle in what we do not know." Indeed, his work contains pre-regenerationist concerns that surface from time to time despite the traditionalism he imposed on himself so as not to slight his father; for example, in his poem "Toledo" the national decline following a glorious past is not hidden from the poet.

Zorrilla's style is characterized by great plasticity and musicality and a powerful sense of mystery and of tradition; because of the latter, apart from his subject matter, archaisms abound, taken for the most part from the theater of the Golden Age that he had read so much: «aduerme», «a espacio», «afrontallo», «aquesta», «atambor», «desque», «desparece», «diz», «do», «doquier», «ha poco», «matalle», «mesma», «presa», «quienquier», «seor», «el arena», «la alma», «la puente», «una tigre», «una fantasma», «un hora»... He also uses old turns of phrase and oaths. His metrics are extremely rich and in general each of his works is polymetric, except for some short legends that he composed only in romance; in the rest, traditional meters and stanzas predominate, such as cuartetas, quintillas, sextinas, octavillas, cuartetos, octavas and octavas reales, romancillos of six and seven syllables, romances, romances heroicos and silvas. On occasion there appear fourteen-syllable romances, fourteen-syllable lines forming rhymed cuartetos, dodecasyllables, rhymed octosyllables, apart from some other combinations used in exceptional circumstances; the same is true of his dramas, where Zorrilla preferred cuartetas, quintillas, romances and silvas. He even shows off by using the metrical scale in Un testigo de bronce: he begins with dodecasyllables and descends to disyllables, and after 48 lines in romance heroico he contemplates a dawn also described in an ascending scale that goes from two-syllable lines up to fourteen-syllable ones. In Spanish Romanticism he represents the moment of the nationalization of its imported elements. His work is uneven, at times highly inspired and at others verbose and lacking in concision: in any case, it is always proudly spontaneous, free and uninhibited:

For in works of taste and of whim / that bring only pleasure and no profit, / anything may be done if it is well done / and may be said if it is well said.

Among his lyric poems of the first period, the well-known Orientales stand out, a genre already cultivated by Victor Hugo. Much better are the Leyendas, where he shows himself to be a better narrative poet than lyric poet and wisely combines intrigue, surprise and mystery. "Margarita la tornera," "A buen juez mejor testigo" and "El capitán Montoya" were very famous. At thirty-five he published Granada (1852), a brilliant evocation of the Muslim world. By subject matter we can establish five groups:

• Religious lyric poetry (Ira de Dios, La Virgen al pie de la Cruz)
• Love lyric poetry (Un recuerdo y un suspiro, A una mujer)
• Sentimental lyric poetry (La meditación, La luna de enero)
• Descriptive lyric poetry (Toledo, A un torreón)
• Philosophical lyric poetry (Cuentos de un loco)

In his dramatic work he offers three fundamental pieces: El zapatero y el rey, Don Juan Tenorio and Traidor, inconfeso y mártir. In El zapatero y el rey (1840–1841), Don Pedro the Cruel appears from the point of view of popular tradition, as a likable and justice-dealing character whom fate leads to disaster. In Don Juan Tenorio (1844), the character of the trickster created by Tirso de Molina, and continued in Tan largo me lo fiáis by Antonio de Zamora, which had been performed as a moral play on All Souls' Day for nearly a century and a half, comes back to life; Zorrilla's piece achieved such success that it replaced that play in the custom. He introduced various innovations that greatly improved the dramatic structure: he introduced the figure of Doña Inés, that of Don Luis Mejía, and the salvation through the love of the idealized Doña Inés, rather than the traditional damnation, of the impetuous Don Juan. Although the Tenorio abounds in careless passages, puerile effects and bursts of lyricism that border on mawkishness, Zorrilla redeems everything with the vigor of his theatricality, his fluid command of versification, his mastery in handling the action, the firmness of the characters and his unsurpassable sense of mystery. Zorrilla himself was not very pleased with his work, which he criticized mercilessly in his memoirs, but criticism must admit that, beside its dramatic virtues, its defects seem trivial and are scarcely noticeable. As for Traidor, inconfeso y mártir (1849), a maximum of balance is achieved, although the author alters historical reality by making "the pastry cook of Madrigal," who was hanged for having attempted to impersonate King Don Sebastian of Portugal, who disappeared in the Battle of Alcazarquivir, in fact be the monarch himself.

Zorrilla House Museum in Valladolid

The writer's House Museum

Main article: Zorrilla House

It occupies the poet's house, where he spent his early childhood continuously, as well as sporadic stays at other stages throughout his life, such as the one coinciding with his return from Mexico.

Works

Complete works

• Obras. Paris: Baudry, Colección de los Mejores Autores Españoles, vols. 39, 40 and 54, 1837.
• Obras de José Zorrilla. Nueva edición corregida y la sola reconocida por el autor, con su biografía por Ildefonso de Ovejas. Paris: Baudry, Librería Europea, 1852, 3 vols.
• Obras completas de don José Zorrilla, corregidas y anotadas por su autor. Edición monumental y la única que contiene muchas producciones inéditas, además de cuantas han visto la luz hasta el día ilustradas con profusión de grabados por los mejores artistas españoles. Volume One [and only]. Barcelona: Sociedad de Crédito Intelectual, 1884.
• Obras dramáticas y líricas (M. P. Delgado, ed.). Madrid: 1895, 4 vols.
• Galería Dramática. Obras Completas. Madrid: 1905, 4 vols.
• Obras completas. Madrid: Sociedad Editorial de España, 1943, 4 vols.
• Obras Completas (Narciso Alonso Cortés, ed.). Valladolid: Santarén, 1943, 2 vols.

Lyric poetry

• Poesías, I, Madrid: J. Sancha, 1837.
• Poesías, II, Madrid: José María Repullés, 1838.
• Poesías, III, Madrid: José María Repullés, 1838.
• Poesías, IV, Madrid: José María Repullés, 1839.
• Poesías, V, Madrid: José María Repullés, 1839.
• Poesías, VI, Madrid: José María Repullés, 1839.
• Poesías, VII, Madrid: José María Repullés, 1840.
• Vigilias del estío. Madrid: Boix, 1842.
• Recuerdos y fantasías. Madrid: J. Repullés, 1844.
• Cuentos de un loco, 1853.
• La flor de los recuerdos. Ofrenda que hace a los pueblos hispano-americanos, 1855.
• Dos rosas y dos rosales, 1859.
• With José Heriberto García de Quevedo, María. Corona poética de la Virgen. Poema religioso, Madrid, Imprenta que fue de Operarios, a cargo de A. Cubas, 1849.

Narrative poems

• Granada. Poema oriental, precedido de la leyenda de Al-Hamar, Paris: Imprenta de Pillet fils ainé, 1852, 2 vols.
• La leyenda del Cid (1882)

Theater

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El molino de Guadalajara (1843).

• Vivir loco y morir más, premiered in 1837.
• With Antonio García Gutiérrez, Juan Dándolo, premiered in 1839.
• Más vale llegar a tiempo que rondar un año, 1839, not performed, unpublished.
• Ganar perdiendo, 1839.
• Cada cual con su razón, 1839, comedy.
• Lealtad de una mujer y aventuras de una noche, 1839, comedy.
• El zapatero y el rey (first part, drama in four acts, Madrid: imprenta de Yenes, 1840; and second part 1841); there is a modern edition by Jean-Louis Picoche, Madrid: Castalia, 1980.
• El eco del torrente, premiered in 1842.
• Los dos virreyes, premiered in 1842.
• Un año y un día, premiered in 1842.
• Sancho García, Composición trágica en tres actos Madrid: Repullés, 1842.
• Caín pirata. Cuadro de introducción al drama en tres actos titulado Un año y un día, Madrid: Repullés, 1842.
• El puñal del godo, premiered in 1843.
• Sofronia, tragedy in one act in the classical manner, premiered in 1843.
• La mejor razón, la espada, Madrid: Repullés, June 1843 (adaptation of a comedy by Agustín Moreto).
• El molino de Guadalajara, premiered in 1843, published in Madrid: Repullés, 1850.
• La oliva y el laurel. Alegoría escrita para las fiestas de la proclamación de Su Majestad la Reina doña Isabel II, Madrid: imprenta de Yenes, 1843.
• Don Juan Tenorio. Drama religioso-fantástico. Madrid: Imprenta de Repullés, 1844; same place and press, 1845; Madrid: Imprenta de Repullés, 1845 and 1849; Madrid: D. Antonio Yenes, 1846; Tenorio. Drama religioso-fantástico en dos partes (Federico Booch-Arkossy, ed.). Gotha: en casa de Guillermo Opetz, 1866; Madrid: Tip. de E. Cuesta, 1883; Madrid: Tip. de los Sucesores de E. Cuesta, 1892. There are modern editions by Nicholson B. Adams (1957), W. Mills (1966), Francisco García Pavón (1970), José Luis Varela Iglesias (1974, facsimile of the autograph manuscript, and 1975), Salvador García Castañeda (1975), Agustín Letelier Zúñiga (1980), Aniano Peña (1979), José Luis Gómez (1984), Jean-Louis Picoche (1985 and 1992), Federico Carlos Sainz de Robles (1988), J. F. Peña with an Introduction by Francisco Nieva (1990), Enrique Llovet (1990), Ana Alcolea Serrano (1992), Luis Fernández Cifuentes with a Prologue by Ricardo Navas Ruiz (1993), David T. Gies (1994), Begoña Alonso Monedero (1995 and 2001), Juan B. Montes Bordajandi (2000) and Montserrat Amores (2001).
• La copa de marfil, premiered in 1844, tragedy.
• El alcalde Ronquillo, premiered in 1845.
• El rey loco. Drama en tres actos, premiered in 1846.
• La reina y los favoritos, premiered in 1846.
• La calentura, 1847 (second part of El puñal del godo).
• El excomulgado, drama en tres actos, Madrid: Repullés, September 1848, about James I the Conqueror.
• La Creación y El Diluvio Universal. Espectáculo teatral en cuatro actos, divididos en seis partes. Madrid: Sociedad de Operarios, 1848.
• Traidor, inconfeso y mártir. Collection «El teatro de obras dramáticas». Madrid: 1849; 1859; 1865; 1873; 1881; and 1882. There are modern editions by Xavier Martínez de Vedia (1998), Ricardo Senabre (1964, 1970, 1976, 1995); E. Torres Pintueles (1966); A. Rodríguez Zapatero (1972), Roberto Calvo (1990), Xabier Manrique de Vedia (1993).
• El caballo del rey Don Sancho. Comedia en cuatro jornadas y en verso. Madrid: Repullés, 1850.
• El encapuchado, comedy of intrigue written in 1870 under another title: Entre clérigos y diablos.
• Don Juan Tenorio, 1877, zarzuela of the same name that he adapted from his own Romantic drama, with music by Nicolás Manent.

Memoirs

• Recuerdos del tiempo viejo, published in installments in Los Lunes de El Imparcial in 1879 and later in Madrid: Imprenta de los Sucesores de Ramírez, 1880, volume I, and Madrid: Tipografía de Gutenberg, 1882, volume II. There is a modern edition: Madrid: Publicaciones Españolas, 1961.
• Hojas traspapeladas de los Recuerdos del tiempo viejo, Madrid, Eduardo Mengíbar, 1882.
• Memorias del tiempo mexicano. (Ed. and prologue by Pablo Mora. Notes by Silvia Salgado and Pablo Mora). Mexico: Dirección General de Publicaciones, Conaculta, 1998.
• México y los mexicanos (1855-1857) (Prologue, notes and bibliography by Andrés Henestrosa). Mexico: De Andrea, 1955.

Other works

• Un cuento de amores (with José Heriberto García de Quevedo). Madrid: Est. tip. del Seminario, 1850.
• El drama del alma, 1867.
• Discurso poético leído ante la Real Academia Española por el Excmo. Sr. D. José Zorrilla en la recepción pública del día 31 de mayo de 1885 y contestación del Excmo. Sr. Marqués de Valmar. Madrid: Imprenta y Fundición de Manuel Tello, Impresor de Cámara de S. M. Isabel la Católica, 1885.
• ¡A escape y al vuelo!, 1888.
• De Murcia al cielo, 1888.
• Mi última brega, 1888.
• Epistolario

Legends

• Leyendas (Salvador García, ed.). Madrid: Cátedra, 2000.
• Cantos del Trovador. Colección de leyendas y tradiciones históricas. Madrid: Boix, 1840 and 1841, 2 vols.
• El desafío del diablo y Un testigo de bronce. Dos leyendas tradicionales por D. José Zorrilla. Madrid: Boix, 1845.
• Ecos de las montañas: leyendas históricas, Barcelona: Montaner y Simon, 1868, 2 vols.
• A buen juez, mejor testigo: tradición de Toledo, in Poesías, 1838. Barcelona: Atlántida, 1941. (Prologue by Ángel Valbuena Prat); it is inspired by the legend of the Cristo de la Vega.
• Para verdades el tiempo y para justicias Dios, 1838, about fatal jealousy.
• El capitán Montoya, 1840. Zorrilla considered it "an embryo of Don Juan Tenorio."
• Margarita la tornera, 1840.
• La pasionaria
• La princesa Doña Luz
• Justicias del rey don Pedro, 1840, inspired by the Historia de España of Juan de Mariana.
• Las dos rosas
• El talismán, 1842
• Príncipe y rey
• Los encantos de Merlín
• Historia de un español y dos francesas, 1840–1841. It is inspired by the David perseguido of Cristóbal Lozano.
• Las estocadas de noche
• Dos rosas y dos rosales
• Historia de tres avemarías
• Una aventura de 1360
• El escultor y el duque
• Las píldoras de Salomón, 1840.
• Honra y vida
• Ecos de las montañas
• Apuntaciones para un sermón sobre los Novísimos. Tradición, 1840, inspired by the David perseguido of Cristóbal Lozano.
• Los borceguíes de Enrique II
• El montero de Espinosa, 1842. It is inspired by another story from the David perseguido of Cristóbal Lozano.
• Recuerdos de Valladolid, 1839.
• Dos hombres generosos, 1842.
• Al-hamar el Nazarita, rey de Granada: Leyenda oriental dividida en cinco libros titulados: De los sueños, De las perlas, De los alcázares, De los espíritus, y De las nieves
• La leyenda del Cid
• La leyenda de don Juan Tenorio, 1873
• Las almas enamoradas. Leyenda en verso
• La azucena silvestre. Leyenda religiosa del siglo IX. Madrid: Imp. de Antonio Yenes, 1845.
• El cantar del romero. Leyenda en verso by D. José Zorrilla. Barcelona: Administración de Crédito Intelectual, 1886.

See also

• Spanish Romantic literature: Romanticism in the Spanish literary context.
• Spanish Romantic writers: List of Romantic authors.

Bibliography

• Alonso Cortés, Narciso (1916–1920). Zorrilla: su vida y sus obras (in español). Valladolid: Imprenta Castellana. p. 1512.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: date format (link)
• Navas Ruiz, Ricardo (1982). El Romanticismo español (in español) (3rd ed.). Madrid: Cátedra. ISBN 978-84-376-0318-6.
• Navas Ruiz, Ricardo (1995). La poesía de José Zorrilla: nueva lectura histórico-crítica (in español). Madrid: Gredos. p. 216. ISBN 84-249-1681-6.
• Zarandona, Juan (2004). Los «Ecos de las montañas» de José Zorrilla y sus fuentes de inspiración: de Tennyson a Doré (in español). Valladolid: University of Valladolid. ISBN 978-84-8448-298-7.

External links

• josezorrilla.archivomunicipalvalladolid.es Website maintained by the Municipal Archive of Valladolid, bringing together nearly 1,000 documents from more than 10 holding institutions related to the life and work of Zorrilla.
• Digitized works of José Zorrilla in the Biblioteca Digital Hispánica of the National Library of Spain