José Zorrilla y Moral (February 21, 1817 - January 23, 1893), was a Spanish poet and dramatist. February 21 is the 52nd day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ... 1817 was a common year starting on Wednesday (see link for calendar). ... January 23 is the 23rd day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ... 1893 was a common year starting on Sunday (see link for calendar). ... Poets are authors of poems. ... A dramatist is an author of dramatic compositions, usually plays. ...

He was the son of a magistrate in whom Ferdinand VII placed special confidence, and was born at Valladolid. He was educated by the Jesuits at the Real Seminario de Nobles in Madrid, wrote verses when he was twelve, became an enthusiastic admirer of Scott and Chateaubriand, and took part in the school performances of plays by Lope de Vega and Calderón. A magistrate is a judicial officer with limited authority to administer and enforce the law. ... Ferdinand VII (October 14, 1784 - September 29, 1833) was King of Spain from 1813 to 1833. ... This article deals with the Spanish city. ... The Society of Jesus (Latin: Societas Iesu), commonly known as the Jesuits, is a Roman Catholic religious order. ... Coat of arms The Plaza de España square Madrid, the capital of Spain, is located in the center of the country at 40°25′ N 3°45′ W. Population of the city of Madrid proper was 3,093,000 (Madrilenes, madrileños) as of 2003 estimates. ... For the first Premier of Saskatchewan see Thomas Walter Scott Sir Walter Scott (August 14, 1771 - September 21, 1832) was a prolific Scottish historical novelist and poet popular throughout Europe. ... François-René de Chateaubriand François-René, vicomte de Chateaubriand (September 4, 1768 – July 4, 1848) was a French writer and diplomat considered the founder of Romanticism in French literature. ... Pedro Calderón de la Barca (January 17, 1600 – May 25, 1681), Spanish dramatist and poet, was born at Madrid. ...

In 1833 he was sent to read law at the University of Toledo, but, after a year of idleness, he fled to Madrid, where he horrified the friends of his absolutist father by making violent speeches and by founding a newspaper which was promptly suppressed by the government. He narrowly escaped transportation to the Philippines, and passed the next few years in poverty. Alternate meanings: see Toledo (disambiguation) The façade of Toledo cathedral Toledo is a city located in central Spain, the capital of the province of Toledo and of the autonomous community of Castile-La Mancha. ...

The death of the satirist Larra brought Zorrilla into notice. His elegiac poem, declaimed at Larra's funeral in February 1837, served as an introduction to the leading men of letters. In 1837 he published a book of verses, mostly imitations of Lamartine and Hugo, which was so favourably received that he printed six more volumes within three years. His subjects are treated with fluency and grace, but the carelessness which disfigures much of his work is prominent in these juvenile poems. Satire is a literary technique of writing or art which principally ridicules its subject (individuals, organizations, states) often as an intended means of provoking or preventing change. ... Mariano José de Larra ( 24 March 1809 - 13 February 1837) was a Spanish writer noted for satire and perhaps the best prose writer of 19th-century Spain. ... February is the second month of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ... 1837 was a common year starting on Sunday (see link for calendar). ... Alphonse Marie Louise Prat de Lamartine (October 21, 1790 - February 28, 1869) was a French writer, poet and politician. ... Victor Hugo Victor Hugo (February 26, 1802 - May 22, 1885) was a French author, the most important of the Romantic authors in the French language. ...

After collaborating with García Gutiérrez in a piece entitled Juán Dondolo (1839) Zorrilla began his individual career as a dramatist with Cada cual con su razón (1840), and during the following five years he wrote twenty-two plays, many of them extremely successful. His Cantos del trovador (1841), a collection of national legends versified with infinite spirit, showed a decided advance in skill, and secured for the author the place next to Espronceda in popular esteem. Antonio García Gutiérrez (July 5, 1812 - August 6, 1884), Spanish dramatist, was born at Chiclana (Cádiz), and studied medicine in his native town. ...

National legends also supply the themes of his dramas, though in this department Zorrilla somewhat compromised his reputation for originality by adapting older plays which had fallen out of fashion. For example, in El Zapatero y el Rey he recasts El montanés Juan Pascual by Juan de la Hoz y Mota; in La mejor Talon la espada he borrows from Moreto's Travesuras del estudiante Pa-atoja; in Don Juan Tenorio he adapts from Tirso de Molina's Burlador de Sevilla and from the elder Dumas's Don Juan de Marana (which itself derives from Les dames du purgatoire of Prosper Mérimée). But his rearrangements usually contain original elements, and in Sancho García, El Rey loco, and El Alcalde Ronquillo he apparently owes little to any predecessor. The last and (as he himself believed) the best of his plays is Traidor, inconfeso y mártir (1845). Agustín Moreto y Cavana (April, 1618 - October 28, 1661), was a Spanish dramatist and playwright. ... Don Juan Tenorio: Drama religioso-fantástico en dos partes (Don Juan Tenorio: Religio-Fantastic Drama in Two Parts), is a play published in 1844 by José Zorrilla. ... Tirso de Molina (October, 1571 - March 12, 1648) was a Spanish dramatist. ... Alexandre Dumas redirects here. ...

Upon the death of his mother in 1847 Zorrilla left Spain, resided for a while at Bordeaux, and settled in Paris, where his incomplete Granada, a striking poem of gorgeous local colour, was published in 1852. In a fit of depression, the causes of which are not known, he emigrated to America three years later, hoping, as he says, that yellow fever or smallpox would carry him off. During eleven years spent in Mexico he produced little, and that little was of no merit. He returned in 1866, to find himself a half-forgotten classic. His old fertility was gone, and new standards of taste were coming into fashion. City motto: Lilia sola regunt lunam undas castra leonem. ... The Eiffel Tower has become the symbol of Paris throughout the world. ... The Americas (sometimes referred to as America) is the area including the land mass located between the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean, generally divided into North America and South America. ...

A small post, obtained for him through the influence of Jovellar and Cánovas del Castillo, was abolished by the republican minister. He was always poor, and for some twelve years after 1871 he was in the direst straits. The law of copyright was not retrospective, and, though some of his plays made the fortunes of managers, they brought him nothing. In his untrustworthy autobiography, Recuerdos del tiempo viejo (1880), he complained of this. A pension of 30,000 reales secured him from want in his old age, and the reaction in his favour became an apotheosis. A copyright is a form of intellectual property which secures to its holder the exclusive right to produce copies of his or her works of original expression, such as a literary work, movie, musical work or sound recording, painting, photograph, computer program, or industrial design, for a defined, yet extendable...

In 1885 the Spanish Academy, which had elected him a member many years before, presented him with a gold medal of honour, and in 1889 he was publicly crowned at Granada as the national laureate. He died at Madrid on the January 23 1893. January 23 is the 23rd day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ...

Zorrilla is so intensely Spanish that it is difficult for foreign critics to do him justice. It is certain that the extraordinary rapidity of his methods seriously injured his work. He declares that he wrote El Caballo del Rey Don Sancho in three weeks, and that he put together El Puñal del Godo (which, like La Calenture, owes much to Southey) in two days; if so, his deficiencies need no other explanation. Robert Southey, English poet Robert Southey (August 12, 1774 - March 21, 1843) was an English poet of the Romantic school, and one of the so-called Lake Poets. Although his fame tends to be eclipsed by that of his contemporaries such as William Wordsworth, Southeys verse enjoys enduring popularity. ...

An improvisator with the characteristic faults of redundance and verbosity, he wrote far too much, and in most of his numbers there are numerous technical flaws. Yet the richness of his imagery, the movement, fire and variety of his versification, will preserve some few of his poems in the anthologies. His appeal to patriotic pride, his accurate dramatic instinct, together with the fact that he invariably gives at least one of his characters a most effective acting part, have enabled him to hold the stage. It is by Don Juan Tenorio, the play of which he thought so meanly, that Zorrilla will be best remembered. Don Juan Tenorio: Drama religioso-fantástico en dos partes (Don Juan Tenorio: Religio-Fantastic Drama in Two Parts), is a play published in 1844 by José Zorrilla. ...

This article incorporates text from the public domain 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica. The public domain comprises the body of all creative works and other knowledge—writing, artwork, music, science, inventions, and others—in which no person or organization has any proprietary interest. ... The Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica ( 1911) in many ways represents the sum of knowledge at the beginning of the 20th century. ...